| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2003 10:42 pm Post subject: Iraq: How Did We Get Here? |
| http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/November/7%20o/Iraq%20How%20did%20we%20get%20here%20John%20Anast.htm
Opinion Editorials, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Iraq: How did we get here?
John Anast
Al-Jazeerah, 11/7/03
As the battle rages in Iraq what do we really know about the reasons for the war? The weapons of mass destruction "WMD" have become harder to identify and as mysterious as UFO sightings. In fact a disturbing aspect of the hunt for WMD was the admission by Mr. Kay, who has no academic background in any scientific discipline, was that no "program" could be found supporting the claim that Iraq had attempted to reconstitute a nuclear capability. As investigations continue within the US Congress as to the nature and quality of intelligence provided to decision makers within the Bush Administration, a few well placed leaks and a few scant news articles are beginning to identify what actually happened. It seems that a small group of Zionists created and operated their own intelligence service within the Pentagon which came to be known as the Office of Special Plans "OSP" run by Douglas Feith, Mr. Shulski and Mr. Luti, under the supervision of Mr. Wolfowitz. According to a July 17, 2003 story in the Guardian by Julian Borge which is an expose on OSP, Israelis were admitted to the Pentagon on occasion without having to show identification or sign-in, allegedly as directly authorized by Mr. Feith. The now defunct OSP is at the center of the storm. It is suspected of rewriting Intelligence as well as providing information known to be false directly to decision makers in the Bush Administration without being vetted or reviewed by seasoned intelligence analysts at CIA.
The Guardian in the same article also reported that OSP had a "parallel ad hoc" sister organization within Sharon's office in Israel -- a separate function from " Mossad " . It was later learned from sources in the UK that a similar office was operating out of 10 Downing Street. The speculation is that Zionist agents in the US, Israel and the United Kingdom under the direction of Israel, directly and through surrogates, planted false intelligence in official Pentagon channels for use by the Bush Administration as a means to deceive the US Congress and the American people. There is further speculation that the Zionist agents were all too eager to circumvent US law and had no hesitation to provide false information to the US Congress. One may note that last statement is not surprising given some of these very same Zionist agents were convicted in the United States of that very offense in the past. It does not take much to assert that they placed the interests of Israel well above the interests of America. CIA reports resolving that Iraq would become a quagmire fuelled by Iraqi resistance to occupation were promptly discarded by the Bush Administration in favor of the ridiculous notion that the US Army would be welcomed as liberators. There is currently an effort emanating from the Vice President's office and from within the Pentagon to wholly blame CIA for faulty intelligence, as the "perpetrators" are attempting to find solace in another lie for the ghastly loss of American lives in Iraq and the economic toll yet to be felt in America. Sources mentioned that the task of rationalizing the intelligence product was well beyond the capability of Dr. Rice at the National Security Council "NSC" who could not handle the task. It may well be that Rice, et al seem more interested in covering-up their errors than in setting forth exactly how their Zionist mentors subverted and co-opted their work.
Some were surprised that these same Zionist fanatics went as far as to out a CIA operative in the press as an alleged slap against her husband Ambassador Wilson. More likely it was a salvo meant to stop similar leaks in an effort to cover-up the connections between prominent members of the Bush Administration, NSC staff and the Israeli operation to deceive the President of the United States, the Congress and the American people, which was apparently not that difficult. It should be no surprise to anyone that Israeli agents in America would disclose information harmful to American interests when their actions are directly responsible for the deaths of over 350 (and rising) US military personnel in Iraq (as well as 1,000 wounded) and have thus far cost the US over $150 Billion (and counting). I have heard it said that within the Administration there is a strategy to wait until after the 2004 presidential election to take action quietly against some people at Pentagon and within the White House itself. It seems that they do not wish to appear "stupid" before the American people.
As to the real reason for the war in Iraq, well that is all too easy to answer. The Iraq war which is spiraling out of control was actually about oil, but not oil destined for the United States. Israel, through deception, instigated the conflict in an attempt to gain access to Iraqi oil. I am sure that many are familiar with the pipeline which runs from Iraq into Jordan and at one time continued on to Haifa. While the pipeline was used to ship oil to Jordan the flow to Palestine was cutoff in 1948. Israel actually had military plans to attack Iraq on its own and steal the oil as outlined in an extensive 17 April article, updated 06 May 2003, by Joe Vialls entitled "Israel's Blitzkrieg on Middle East Oil" That said, Israel lacks the military resources for an extended campaign and direct ground access as well as the manpower to be able to hold a position in Southern Iraq, especially with the continued intafada and the likelihood that Syria and Iran would oppose such a move and attack Israeli positions in Iraq and Israel as well. So with few operational options to implement Israel did the next best thing it instigated a proxy war to be fought by the United States.
The ultimate goal of the Israeli failed plan was to create a "Rotterdam" type export operation at Haifa -- as brilliantly reported by Joe Vialls . A very strange idea considering that the pipeline traverses several Arab countries and is opposed by Iran. But the Israeli's figured that the cost benefit was well worth the effort and cost to America. According to Mr. Vialls' article the Israeli's estimated that the port of Haifa as an oil export terminal would generate $45 billion in annual fees. So Israel used its Zionist agents in America to dupe the Bush Administration (obviously not too hard) into attacking Iraq. While Americans are being killed in Iraq by the dozens, a faint echo of laughter may be heard in Tel Aviv. The Israeli plan also called for the US to attack Syria and Iran (and Saudi Arabia if necessary) as a means of quashing any meaningful opposition to reopening the pipeline.
It took surprisingly little additional effort for the Zionist agents of Israel in the United States to mirror the Israeli plan into official US plans, without attribution, so that they seemed complimentary and in strategic harmony. As if to suggest that their war was our war and that their strategic interests were the same as those of the United States, when nothing could be farther from the truth. The mere fact that Israel sought to implement its plan for oil conquest highlights the fact its strategic objectives are in direct conflict with the strategic regional objectives of America. In addition Israel's acquisition of a sub launched nuclear capability also underscores its desire to move away from dependence upon the US for deterrence. Unfortunately for Israel it is a blight upon the American taxpayer and cannot survive without the constant flow of monetary gifts from the very people it despises and has learned to ignore. The Israel experiment is a complete failure, its economy is in serious trouble and its reliance upon the United States has become problematic and an anathema to them. So if Israel were to become self-sufficient and in fact survive it would need a source of revenue -- oil, which is the premise of Mr. Vialls' article. While their plan failed and lacked the foresight and contingencies expected as opposition to the occupation of Iraq by average Iraqi's became a reality, what did they lose? They gained additional access to US technology, more military aid as well as additional economic aid. While they did not gain Iraqi oil, the US is paying the price in terms of both money and lives.
Turkey which recently refused a state visit by Sharon on his way back to Israel from Moscow would have been the big loser as the Zionist dream (really more of a nightmare) would have replaced Ceyhan as the principle export point in the Med. What every country in the Middle East region must remember is that the goal of Israel in not by any means peace in any sense of the word. Its goal is dominance of the entire region and complete annexation of territory well beyond Palestine. It should be clear by now that agreements with countries like Turkey are a rouse and should be recognized as such. With oil traders in Israel squawking about a "new Rotterdam", I am sure Turkey understands full well they were used as a pawn in a larger Israeli strategy which includes the domination and subjugation of Turkey as well. Palestine is the front line in a struggle against the state sponsored terrorism of Israel. The daily sacrifices made by the Palestinians against ethnic cleansing is a fight for their homeland to be sure, but it is also the finger in the dyke against the expansionist maniacal desires of Israel which threaten the entire Middle East.
The price to be paid by the United States for the sins of Israel are beyond calculation at this point. The Bush Administration's Iraq policy seems to be to prevent any free expression of democratic principles from forming a democratic Islamic government until after the 2004 elections. It seems clear to people on the ground, with exception to the Zionist propagandists who dominate the talk show circuit in the US, that an Islamic government in Iraq is inevitable. The mistakes made in both planning and implementation have been so gross and consistent that one must wonder if the goal of some at the Pentagon was in fact to prevent the quick reconstitution of Iraq? Iraqi owned businesses are being sold off to foreign interests, Israeli military intelligence bases are being constructed near the Iranian border and services have yet to be fully restored. Contracts for needed services have been reverted to sales of new equipment from US suppliers that in many instances the Iraqi people do not need or cannot use, but the sales go on. Some months ago the Pentagon and its civilian counterparts in Iraq decided that medical facilities would be restored and restricted to the hospitals exclusively so that new equipment could be provided as a boon to US suppliers, instead of providing needed medical services free to the average Iraqi in a secure location where they could feel safe. Very few if any American Iraqi doctors were contracted for their obviously needed contribution. In fact many American Iraqi doctors were rebuffed and had to make humanitarian efforts on their own. There were also plans to implement the re-training of the Iraqi military into regional units, and into police agencies to assure order in Iraq. But those plans were rejected at first, and are now only being reviewed for implementation. The human toll and costs of the sins of Israel in Palestine and now Iraq are beyond measure.
The entire world must join together to force peace on Israel -- which is what it fears most. After a Palestinian State (with full statehood) of contiguous territory is recognized, then countries may engage a disarmed Israel in treaties and trade. It is foolish for any country in the region to engage in discussions with Israel regarding any matter except for Palestine. Unless that is accomplished Israel will continue its push into Arab territory without much of a whimper from the Bush Administration here in occupied America. Since the war is being fought on behalf of Israeli interests think we should deduct the costs of the war from the annual military and financial aid to Israel.
* The Guardian article "The Spies who pushed for war" was written by Julian Borge and published July 17, 2003 (Below). The Joe Vialls article was published 17 April 2003 and updated 06 May 2003.
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The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003 The Guardian
As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.
It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.
Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also said his agency was under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already decided on.
How much Mr Tenet reveals of where that pressure was coming from could have lasting political fallout for Mr Bush and his re-election prospects, which only a few weeks ago seemed impregnable. As more Americans die in Iraq and the reasons for the war are revealed, his victory in 2004 no longer looks like a foregone conclusion.
The White House counter-attacked yesterday when new chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused critics of "politicising the war" and trying to "rewrite history". But the Democratic leadership kept up its questions over the White House role.
The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.
Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.
An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said there was nothing unusual about that.
Rick Tyler, Mr Gingrich's spokesman, said: "If he was at the CIA he was there to listen and learn, not to persuade or influence."
Mr Gingrich visited Langley three times before the war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.
Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP.
In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.
William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.
The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.
There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.
"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.
As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".
"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."
In fact, the OSP's activities were a com plete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.
"The iceberg analogy is a good one," said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. "No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them."
The civilian agencies had the same impression of the OSP sleuths. "They were a pretty shadowy presence," Mr Thielmann said. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."
Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."
The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.
"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.
The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.
The big question looming over Congress as Mr Tenet walked into his closed-door session yesterday was whether this shadow intelligence operation would survive national scrutiny and who would pay the price for allowing it to help steer the country into war.
A former senior CIA official insisted yesterday that Mr Feith, at least, was "finished" - but that may be wishful thinking by a rival organisation.
As he prepares for re-election, Mr Bush may opt to tough it out, rather than acknowledge the severity of the problem by firing loyalists. But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms. "
Earth, a planet hungry for peace
The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).
The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2003 7:55 am Post subject: Insider info on the JINSA/PNAC Neo-Cons |
| Insider info on the JINSA/PNAC Neo-Cons
http://www.amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html
December 1, 2003 issue
In Rumsfeld’s Shop
A senior Air Force officer watches as the neocons consolidate their Pentagon coup.
By Karen Kwiatkowski
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the U.S. Air Force. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon. Below is the first of three installments describing her experience there. They provide a unique view of the Department of Defense during a period of intense ideological upheaval, as the United States prepared to launch—for the first time in its history—a “preventive” war. In early May 2002, I was looking forward to retirement from the United States Air Force in about a year. I had a cushy job in the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, International Security Affairs, Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the previous two years, I had published two books on African security issues and had passed my comprehensive doctoral exams at Catholic University. I was very pleased with the administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sub-Saharan Africa, former Marine and Senator Helms staffer Michael Westphal, and was ready to start thinking about my dissertation and my life after the military. When Mike called me in to his office, I thought I was getting a new project or perhaps that one of my many suggestions of fun things to do with Africa policy had been accepted. But the look on his face clued me in that this was going to be one of those meetings where somebody wasn’t leaving happy. After a quick rank check, I had a good idea which one it would be.There was a position in Near East South Asia (NESA) that they needed to fill right away. I wasn’t interested. They phrased the question another way: “We have been tasked to send a body over to Bill Luti. Can we send you?” I resisted—until I slowly guessed that in true bureaucratic fashion and can-do military tradition my name had already been sent over. This little soirée in Mike’s office was my farewell.I went back to my office and e-mailed a buddy in the Joint Staff. Bob wrote back, “Write down everything you see.” I didn’t do it, but these most wise words from a trusted friend proved the first of three omens I would soon receive.I showed up down the hall a few days later. It looked just like the office from which I came, newer blue cubicles, narrow hallways piled high with copy paper, newspapers, unused equipment, and precariously leaning map rolls. The same old concrete-building smell pervaded, maybe a little mustier. I was taking over the desk of a CIA loaner officer. Joe had been called back early to the agency and was hoping to go to Yemen. Before he left, he briefed me on his biggest project: ongoing negotiations with the Qatari sheiks over who was paying for improvements to Al Udeid Air Base. I was familiar with Al Udeid from my time on the Air Staff a few years before. Back then we seemed to like the Saudis, and our Saudi bases were a few hours closer to the action than Al Udeid, so the U.S. played a woo-me game. Now that we needed and wanted Al Udeid to be finished quickly and done up right, it was time for the emirs to play hard to get. Joe gave me the rundown on counterterrorism ops in Yemen and an upcoming agreement with the Bahraini monarch to extend our military-security agreement, locking in a relationship just in case those Bahraini experiments with democracy actually took off.I had an obligatory meeting with the deputy director, Paul Hulley, Navy Captain. This meeting followed a phone call in which I hadn’t been as compliant as I should have been with a Navy Captain, and since Paul had handled my bad attitude with candor and grace, I was determined to like him—and I did. I gave him my story: I was a year from retirement and, more importantly, I was in a car pool. I’d be working a 7:15 to 17:30 schedule. He was neither charmed nor impressed. He advised that I’d need to be working a lot longer than that. Then we stepped in to meet Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Luti. I knew Luti had a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts and was a recently retired Navy Captain himself. At this point, I didn’t know what a neocon was or that they had already swarmed over the Pentagon, populating various hives of policy and planning like African hybrids, with the same kind of sting reflex. Luti just seemed happy to have me there as a warm body.My second omen was the super-size bottles of Tums and Tylenol Joe left in his desk. The third occurred as I was chatting with my new office mate, a career civil servant working the Egypt desk. As the conversation moved into Middle East news and politics, she mentioned that if I wanted to be successful here, I shouldn’t say anything positive about the Palestinians. In 19 years of military service, I had never heard such a politically laden warning on such an obscure topic to such an inconsequential player. I had the sense of a single click, the sound tectonic plates might make as they shift deep under the earth and lock into a new resting position—or when the trigger is pulled in a game of Russian roulette.I had never worked for neocons before, and the philosophical journey to understand what they stood for was not a trip I wanted to take. But my conversations with coworkers and some of the people I was meeting in the office opened my eyes to something strange and fascinating. Those who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite knew that something calculated had happened to NESA. Key personnel, long-time civilian professionals holding the important billets, had been replaced early in the transition. The Office Director, second in command and normally a professional civilian regional expert, was vacant. Joe McMillan had been moved to the NESA Center over at National Defense University. This was strange because in a transition the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies. To remove that continuity factor seemed contraindicated, but at the time, I didn’t realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was being brought in from a variety of outside think tanks.Another civilian replacement about which I was told was that of the long-time Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk, Larry Hanauer. Word was that he was even-handed with Israel, there had been complaints from one of his countries, and as a gesture of good will, David Schenker, fresh from the Washington Institute, was serving as the new Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk.I came to share with many NESA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon. There was a sense that politics like these might play better at the State Department or the National Security Council, not the Pentagon, where we considered ourselves objective and hard boiled.The anti-Arab orientation I perceived was only partially confirmed by things I saw. Towards the end of the summer, we welcomed to the office as a temporary special assistant to Bill Luti an Egyptian-American naval officer, Lt. (later Lt. Cmdr.) Youssef Aboul-Enein. His job wasn’t entirely clear to me, but he would research bits of data in which Bill Luti was interested and peruse Arabic-language media for quotations or events that could be used to demonize Saddam Hussein or link him to nastiness beyond his own borders and with unsavory characters.While I was still hoping to be sent back to the Africa desk, I was also angling to take the NESA North Africa desk that would be vacated in July. During this time, May through mid-July, the news in the daily briefing was focused on war planning for the Iraq invasion. Slides from a CENTCOM brief appeared on the front page of the New York Times on July 5. A few weeks later, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered an investigation into who leaked this information. The Air Force Office of Special Investigation was tasked to work with the FBI, and everyone in NESA was supposed to be interviewed.My interview, by two fresh-faced OSI investigators, occurred sometime in July. One handed me a copy of an article by William Arkin discussing Iraq-war planning published in May 2002 in the Los Angeles Times and asked if I knew Arkin. I didn’t recall the name, but when I checked I learned that he had spent time at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Apparently, Arkin had facilitated a leak six weeks before, but it hadn’t caused a fuss. I pointed out that I did know a person with major SAIS links who probably knew Arkin. They leaned forward eagerly. “Have you ever heard of Paul Wolfowitz?” They looked puzzled, so I called up the bio of the deputy secretary and showed them how he ran SAIS during most of the Clinton years. I suggested the investigation look at the answers to the cui bono question. I also told them no one in the military or at CENTCOM would leak war plans because as Rumsfeld accurately said, it gets people killed. But the politicos who were anxious to get the American people over the mental hump that the Bush administration was going to send troops to Iraq were not military and had both motive and opportunity to leak.During the summer, I assumed the duties of the North Africa desk. Part of my job was to schedule and complete two overdue bilateral meetings with longtime U.S. security partners Morocco and Tunisia. Bilateral meetings historically included a tailored regional-security briefing addressing Weapons of Mass Destruction threats and status. In planning my upcoming bilateral agendas and attendee lists, I discovered that Bill Luti had certain issues regarding the regional-security briefing, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism.There had been an incident shortly before I arrived in which the Defense Intelligence Officer had been prohibited from giving his briefing to a particular country only hours before he was scheduled. During the summer, the brief was simply not scheduled for another important bilateral meeting. Instead, a briefing was prepared by another policy office that worked on non-proliferation issues. This briefing was not a product of the Defense Intelligence Agency or CIA but instead came from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an “expanded Iraq desk.” It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents.About that same time, my education on the history and generation of the neoconservative movement had completed its first stage. I now understood that neoconservatism was both unhistorical and based on the organizing construct of “permanent revolution.” I had studied the role played by hawkish former Sen. Scoop Jackson (D-Wash.) and the neoconservative drift of formerly traditional magazines like National Review and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. I had observed that many of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon not only had limited military experience, if any at all, but they also advocated theories of war that struck me as rejections of classical liberalism, natural law, and constitutional strictures. More than that, the pressure of the intelligence community to conform, the rejection of it when it failed to produce intelligence suitable for supporting the “Iraq is an imminent threat to the United States” agenda, and the amazing things I was hearing in both Bush and Cheney speeches told me that not only do neoconservatives hold a theory based on ideas not embraced by the American mainstream, but they also have a collective contempt for fact. By August, I was morally and intellectually frustrated by my powerlessness against what increasingly appeared to be a philosophical hijacking of the Pentagon. Indeed, I had sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but perhaps we were never really expected to take it all that seriously …
To be continued
______________________________________________
In a coming installment, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowsi relates what happens when a group of Israeli generals treads the well-worn (for them) path to Douglas Feith’s office.
Additional material on Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowsi:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2003/11/18/us-air-force-lt-colonel-speaks-out-against-bush-neocons.php
Pat Buchanan's 'Whose War?' article (also from the American Conservative magazine) is a MUST READ as well (if you would like to know more about the JINSA/PNAC Neocons who have hijacked the Bush regime's Middle East policy for their Israel firster agenda):
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 1:04 pm Post subject: JINSA/PNAC Zionist (Neocon) Spy Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq |
| When you read the following, keep in mind that Douglas Feith is a JINSA/PNAC Zionist extremist Jew who is pictured at www.nowarforisrael.com as we really need to put the heat on these nefarious traitors to America (like Feith, Bolton, Perle, etc) who have no problem spending the lives of US soldiers (over 600 thus far in Iraq) for their 'protect Israel at all cost' agenda:
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-tenet10mar10,1,267466.story
THE NATION
Spy Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq
Pentagon group's role in shaping White House views about ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda was greater than known, Senate panel hears.
IRAQ WAR 2003
INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
TENET GEORGE J
IRAQ WAR 2003 INTELLIGENCE SERVICES DEPARTMENT OF
THE NATION
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE U S
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — A special intelligence unit at the Pentagon privately briefed senior officials at the White House on alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda without the knowledge of CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to new information presented at a Senate hearing Tuesday.
The disclosure suggests that the controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration's views on Iraq's alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet said he was unaware until recently that the Pentagon unit had presented its findings to the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. It is not clear whether Cheney or Rice were present for the briefing, which was mentioned in a Defense Department letter released by the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
In a wide-ranging hearing, Tenet said violence in Iraq was on the upswing, but that he thought there was a "low probability" that strife would prevent the United States from handing authority to an interim Iraqi government on July 1.
Although the hearing was billed as a session to discuss international security concerns, it was marked by heated exchanges reflecting the political tensions over the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons the Bush administration cited as the principal reason for last year's U.S.-led war.
Tenet came under sharp attack from Democrats, who called the prewar intelligence a "fiasco," pointed to what they said were disturbing disparities between classified CIA estimates and more alarming versions released to the public before the war, and criticized the CIA director for saying recently that the agency never portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat.
"The fact that the intelligence assessments before the war were so wildly off the mark should trouble all Americans," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee.
It was under questioning from Levin that Tenet acknowledged that he did not know until within the last few weeks that a special Pentagon intelligence analysis unit had briefed the White House on ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
"I did not know that at the time, and I think I first learned about this at [a congressional] hearing last week," Tenet said. A U.S. intelligence official said Tenet first learned of the White House briefing Feb. 24 during a closed hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Pentagon unit was created by Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The unit was a handful of intelligence analysts, Feith has said, and was established to examine state sponsorship of terrorism, but is principally known for its efforts to assemble evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda.
It has been reported previously that the so-called Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group presented its findings to the CIA in August 2002. But in a letter to Warner released Tuesday for the first time, Feith said the group's briefing "was also given to National Security Council and Office of Vice President staff members."
Levin asked Tenet whether it was "standard operating procedure" for intelligence analysis to be presented to the White House without his involvement.
"I don't know," Tenet replied. "I've never been in the situation."
Tenet emphasized that he briefed President Bush personally almost daily, and that his was "the definitive view about these subjects."
"I know you feel that way," Levin replied, making it clear he wasn't convinced.
Levin said the committee had obtained copies of the Pentagon group's written briefing material, and that the version presented to the White House included material omitted from the briefing for the CIA. He declined to elaborate, saying the documents were classified.
A government official familiar with the briefings said the presentation for the White House included a slide sharply critical of the CIA for failing to recognize evidence pointing toward collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That slide was excluded from the briefing at CIA headquarters at Langley, Va.
The government official said those briefed at the White House included the staff of Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security advisor, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.
The Pentagon intelligence group was disbanded before the war, but remains under scrutiny because of its controversial mission and role.
Critics say it sifted through years of intelligence reports on Iraq, seizing on shards that supported the contention that there was collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and then funneling the information to senior policymakers to help bolster the case for war. Pentagon officials reject that characterization.
Many of the group's findings have been disputed by the CIA and other agencies, who say there is a history of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda but no evidence of an operational relationship. But administration officials continue to cling to the theme, and polls show many Americans believe that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In January, Cheney said "there's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government." Cheney has touted the work of the Pentagon group, saying a Feith memo that lists Iraq-Al Qaeda connections and was leaked to the media is the "best source" on the subject.
Tenet said Tuesday that the CIA "did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document," and that he intended to contact Cheney to caution him about its conclusions. "I learned about [Cheney's] quote last night when I was preparing for this hearing," Tenet said. "And I will talk to him about it."
Some lawmakers said that if Tenet did not believe Iraq was an imminent threat — as he said in a recent speech at Georgetown University — he should have done more to challenge the prewar assertions by Bush and others casting Hussein's regime as a danger that required immediate military intervention.
"You can't have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "You can't on the one hand just say look, we never said that war was imminent, and then have this superheated dialogue and rhetoric [from the White House] … and tell us here before the committee that you have no obligation to correct it or didn't even try."
Tenet shot back: "I'm not going to sit here today and tell you … what I did or what I didn't do, except that you have the confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence I said something about it."
Kennedy then asked Tenet whether he believed the administration "misrepresented the facts to justify the war." Tenet responded, "No, sir, I don't."
Dissecting a key prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons program, Levin cited a number of cases in which he said the CIA or the administration hardened its language or dropped caveats to bolster the case for war. A declassified version of the report warned that Iraq's alleged weapons stocks could be used "against the U.S. homeland," language he said was missing from the classified text.
In another example, Levin cited the CIA's assessment in its classified analysis that Iraq would supply weapons to Al Qaeda only under "desperate" or "extreme" circumstances, qualifiers missing from the public version of the report.
Democrats attacked Tenet for allowing recent statements by administration officials to go unchallenged. Cheney, in particular, has reiterated claims that the intelligence community has backed away from, including comments suggesting Iraq might have been complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that Iraqi trailers seized by American forces are "conclusive" evidence that Iraq had banned weapons.
Urged by Levin to be more swift and assertive in correcting public statements by White House officials, Tenet said, "Sir, it's a fair point."
Republicans on the committee accused Democrats of using the hearing to score political points against the Bush administration as the presidential election is heating up.
Some Republicans defended Tenet, and said he should not have to answer for the prewar claims made by policymakers. The CIA director "is not their keeper," said Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the committee.
Even Republicans who were not involved in the hearing reacted to Democrats' criticisms. One, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in a television interview called Kennedy and Levin "two old attack dogs gumming their way through artificial outrage about something they should know a lot more about and be more responsible about."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-09-iraq-intel_x.htm
Tenet: CIA lax in policing Iraq war claims
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged Tuesday that his agency was "wildly inconsistent" about policing White House statements on Iraq before the invasion last year. The result, Democrats say, is that Bush administration exaggerations about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction went unchallenged.
CIA chief George Tenet told senators Tuesday that his agency did not consistently police White House statements on Iraq.
By Dennis Cook, AP
Senate Democrats pressed the nation's top spy on whether Tenet had a responsibility to ensure policymakers did not overstate the CIA's carefully qualified intelligence reports. With the presidential campaign under way, the senators made clear their real target was not Tenet but President Bush.But the CIA chief said he had no major problems with the case the administration made for going to war. And when asked by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., whether he thought the White House had misrepresented facts to justify the war, Tenet said, "No sir, I don't." Under heated questioning by Senate Democrats, Tenet said he was too busy to check every public utterance by Bush administration officials. Kennedy contrasted Tenet's insistence that the CIA never characterized the Iraqi threat as "imminent" with pre-war warnings by the Bush administration about the "grave" and "unique and urgent" threat posed by Iraq."You can't have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" Kennedy said. "If you're saying that there was no immediate threat and you hear either the president, the vice president, the secretary of Defense using that super-heated rhetoric, we have to ask, what is your responsibility?"Tenet replied, "I have a responsibility. I lived up to my responsibility." Tenet said that when he was aware that a senior administration official exaggerated the Iraqi threat, he took action internally.But Tenet said there were times when he was unaware of administration statements or failed to ensure that a concern he had raised previously was not later ignored.• Tenet said the CIA did not "approve" a Jan. 20, 2003, Bush administration report to Congress referring to Iraqi "attempts to acquire uranium." The CIA had previously told the White House not to repeat that charge because there was no intelligence to support it. Even so, Bush cited the claim just days later in his State of the Union address.• Tenet learned only last week that senior Pentagon official Douglas Feith had briefed White House officials and senators about alleged connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda. "We did not clear on that document," Tenet said. Tenet said that when CIA officials complained, the Pentagon issued a correction. "I don't know that I did (correct the record) in this instance," Tenet said. "I don't know that I listened to it or was made aware of it." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2004 6:37 am Post subject: Smear on a Soldier for the Truth |
| This is a letter Karen Kwiatkowski sent to the Washington Post. Priceless.
Smear on a Soldier for the Truth
George Will's March 15 op-ed column, "Bombs, Ballots and Nation-Building," discussed various topics with a theme of condemning American political rhetoric that is "vituperative."
But Will included vituperative words of his own in a reference to my efforts to create awareness of -- as I wrote last summer in a published op-ed piece and in Salon.com last week -- how "peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-[Saddam] Hussein occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps."
Will includes a phrase I wrote in a new context, saying I have "written about 'the Zionist political cult that has lassoed the E-Ring' of the Pentagon (the offices of senior civilian Defense Department officials)." But the source article, "The 'No Oil Bid'ness Left Behind' Act," published in October 2000 says: "U.S. intentions in Iraq have been criticized for a lot of reasons. Chickenhawks fit to be deep-fried, a Zionist political cult that has lassoed the E-Ring and parts of Washington, general disrespect for Texan traditions of leading by example instead of by force, constitutional concerns and using war to resolve years of piss-poor U.S. energy policies."
Had Will bothered to read what I wrote, he would have recognized that I was listing one of many reported criticisms circulating in 2002. Also, Will -- by inserting his own words in a discussion of my writings -- intends to communicate that I am anti-Semitic. Will's abominable phrase, "those E-Ring Jews," is placed such that it seems as if I either wrote such a term or intended to. I did neither. Suggesting this is a vile, despicable smear.
I understand that my speaking out about what I saw in the Pentagon during the run-up to the Iraq war is disconcerting to people who support the Bush administration's foreign policy. I expected to be questioned on the merit and detail of my observations and memories. Surprisingly, not one defender or advocate of our actions in Iraq and associated propaganda has done that. Instead, people so in love with war without having spent a single minute in a military uniform attack me for standing up to be counted. Vituperative? Try cowardly.
-- Karen Kwiatkowski
Mount Jackson, Va.
The writer is a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/email&referrer=emailarticle | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 12:00 pm Post subject: FBI looks at Pentagon worker in Israel spy probe |
| FBI looks at Pentagon worker in Israel spy probe
Report: Suspect has ties to Wolfowitz, Feith
Saturday, August 28, 2004 Posted: 1:02 AM EDT (0502 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI has evidence that a person who has been working at high levels in the Pentagon may be a spy for Israel, senior U.S. officials have confirmed to CNN.
The alleged "mole" working for Israel could have been in a position to influence Bush administration policy toward Iran and Iraq, one of the officials said on Friday.
However, another government official said the suspect is "not in a level to influence policy."
"He is an analyst in an undersecretary's office," this official said.
Sources said the FBI investigation has been going on for many months and more than one government employee is under investigation.
A senior Pentagon official confirmed to CNN that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "had been made generally aware that the Justice Department had an investigation going on."
The Pentagon issued a statement Friday, confirming it "has been cooperating with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time."
"It is the DOD [Department of Defense] understanding that the investigation within the DOD is limited in its scope."
CBS News, which first reported the story, said the FBI had developed evidence against the suspect, including photographs and conversations recorded through wiretaps.
The network said the alleged spy has ties to two senior Pentagon officials: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.
Multiple sources have told CNN that the investigation is well along, and one government official described the evidence against the suspect as a "slam dunk case" and said "there has been no decision to prosecute the individual."
Officials said the suspect passed classified documents to Israel through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group.
But AIPAC released a statement late Friday calling the news reports "false and baseless."
The statement said AIPAC learned Friday that "the government is investigating an employee of the Department of Defense for possible violations in handling confidential information."
A designation of the material as confidential would indicate a much lower level of secrecy than if it had been designated as classified.
AIPAC said it "is cooperating fully" with government authorities, including providing documents and information and making staff members available for interviews. Sources told CNN that two AIPAC employees have been interviewed in the case by the FBI.
"Neither AIPAC nor any of its employees has violated any laws or rules, nor has AIPAC or its employees ever received information they believed was secret or classified," the statement said.
"AIPAC is an American organization comprised of proud and loyal U.S. citizens committed to promoting American interests. We do not condone or tolerate any violation of any U.S. law or interests."
Washington insiders note that it is not unusual for friendly governments to have access to certain classified information, so even if the allegations are correct, not everyone involved may have thought they were involved in espionage.
Still, one U.S. source is calling the case "a very serious matter."
David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, denied the allegations.
"The United States is Israel's most cherished friend and ally. We have a strong, ongoing, working relationship at all levels, and in no way would Israel do anything to impair this relationship."
An Israeli official in Washington said the U.S. government has not contacted the Israelis about any such investigation.
Despite the close relationship between the two countries, espionage against the United States on behalf of Israel would not be without precedent. Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence for passing classified material to Israel.
The Justice Department, speaking for the FBI, refused to comment, saying only, "We cannot confirm or deny the report."
An FBI spokesman said the bureau has no comment on the CBS report.
CNN's David Ensor, Barbara Starr, Kelli Arena and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
http://cnn.org/2004/US/08/28/fbi.spy/index.html | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 12:26 pm Post subject: The FBI investigation |
| http://www.warandpiece.com/
August 27, 2004
The FBI investigation.
For months, I have been working with my colleagues Paul Glastris and Josh Marshall on a story for the Washington Monthly about US policy towards Iran. In particular, it involves a particular series of meetings involving officials from the office of the undersecretary of defense for Policy Doug Feith and Iranian dissidents.
As part of our reporting, I have come into possession of information that points to an official who is the most likely target of the FBI investigation into who allegedly passed intelligence on deliberations on US foreign policy to Iran to officials with the pro-Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, and to the Israelis, as alleged by the CBS report. That individual is Larry Franklin, a veteran DIA Iran analyst seconded to Feith’s office.
Here is what I was told in the days before the FBI investigation came to light.
A source told me that some time in July, Larry Franklin called him and asked him to meet him in a coffee shop in Northern Virginia. Franklin had intelligence on hostile Iranian activities in Iraq and was extremely frustrated that he did not feel this intelligence was getting the attention and response it deserved. The intelligence included information that the Iranians had called all of their intelligence operatives who speak Arabic to southern Iraq, that it had moved their top operative for Afghanistan, a guy named Qudzi, to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, that its operatives were targeting Iraqi state oil facilities, and that Iranian agents were infiltrating into northern Iraq to target the Israelis written about in a report by Seymour Hersh. According to my source, Franklin passed the information to the individual from AIPAC with the hope it could reach people at higher levels of the US government who would act on it. AIPAC presented the information to Elliot Abrams in the NSC. They also presented the part that involved Israelis who might be targeted to the Israelis, with the motivation to protect Israeli lives.
A couple weeks ago, my source told me, he was visited by two agents of the FBI, who were asking about Franklin. My source couldn’t tell if Franklin was being investigated for possible wrongdoing, or if the FBI was visiting him because Franklin required some sort of higher level security clearance or clearance renewal, perhaps in order to get some sort of new position or posting abroad. My source soon after ran into another official from Feith's office, the polyglot Middle East expert and Bernard Lewis protege, Harold Rhode. My source mentioned the FBI meeting and asked Rhode if Franklin was in trouble. “It’s not clear,” Rhode allegedly told my source.
[Indeed, I have since learned that Rhode has been interviewed by the FBI, but not, allegedly, as a subject of the investigation.]
A second source I met with this past week told me another story. A couple weeks ago, he got called by a consultant to the Pentagon he knows. A small group of Air Force reservists who speak Persian were being trained by the Pentagon at a camp in Virginia in a kind of Iran immersion course, that involved not only language immersion, but “how to play Iranian card games.” The consultant called my second source, an Iran expert, to see if this small elite group could meet with him. He said among the group of four that was supposed to come was Larry Franklin. Franklin in fact did not come, but sent his regrets in a note. My second source said by the way he was terribly impressed with the Iranian language skills that the group that did come possessed.
When the news broke tonight on CBS about the FBI investigation, I tried to get in touch with my first source. But when he answered his phone, he said he couldn’t talk, there were attorneys involved and he wasn’t free to discuss the case.
It’s no secret that some prominent neoconservative officials like Doug Feith, Vice Presidential advisor David Wurmser, and the former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle are sympathetic to the government of Ariel Sharon and the Likud government. Feith, Wurmser and Perle co-authored the paper, A Clean Break, which advocated that Israel abandon the Oslo peace process. But Franklin, although a passionate advocate of regime change in Iran, is not really among them. From modest beginnings, Franklin reportedly put himself through school, earned a PhD, and is now the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst. It would be an irony if he were to be the target of an investigation into passing US intelligence to Israel.
A friend points out one other irony is that what the Pentagon official is alleged in the CBS report to have passed to AIPAC and the Israelis is essentially a diplomatic document that describes a draft US policy position to Iran; in other words -- hardly the crown jewels, and hardly enough to warrant wiretaps and surveillance of Aipac's offices, he says. "The Israelis can get that stuff by going directly to Condoleezza Rice." In other words, it's not deeply technical knowledge about US satellite technology, for instance, or information the Americans had gotten from the Jordanians, or information about say a possible secret US back channel to Hezbollah. He wonders if this case is not politically motivated. It's no secret as well that there's intense competition over who would be national security advisor in a second term Bush administration. Anything that taints Feith and Wolfowitz could benefit their internal Bush administration foes.
We obviously haven't heard the last of this yet. Stay tuned.
Update: Or does this story leaking now indicate rather, a case of "controlled burn?" An investigation that was leaked or interrupted before it could go further, as reader MC suggests? Franklin is seemingly more expendable than others.
Update II: I can't get over the sense this is a ruse, to get somebody else. As Wagster writes in the comments below:
The NYT reports tonight:
Government officials suggested Friday that investigators were seeking the cooperation of the Pentagon official being investigated.
Doesn't that seem to hint that they're using the media to put some heat on the guy, and that they suspect the involvement of others? Why else would they be seeking his cooperation?
Why else indeed.
Update III: Franklin has been investigated for this before, I'm told. What CBS has may not be the whole thing, but part of a pattern. What I have may be another part of a pattern. "There's got to be something else going on here," I'm told.
Update IV: This from Knight Ridder:
The FBI is investigating whether a Pentagon official provided highly classified information about U.S. policy toward Iran to the government of Israel, senior Bush administration officials confirmed Friday.
Investigators have conducted interviews in recent weeks in the potentially explosive case, which has been ongoing for more than a year and targets an individual in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the officials said.
The case involves allegations that the unnamed Pentagon official passed highly classified data to a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which in turn provided that information to the government of Israel.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity, said the FBI also is investigating the same official's contacts with Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi and with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a controversial Iranian arms dealer. Chalabi was a source of much of the discredited pre-Iraq war intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida.
In June, U.S. intelligence officials said they had evidence that Chalabi's security chief had long been a paid agent of Iran's intelligence service and that Chalabi or an aide in his Iraqi National Congress had tipped the Iranians off that the United States had broken some Iranian communications codes. Chalabi has denied the charge.
The CIA has twice labeled Ghorbanifar, a figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, untrustworthy. Nevertheless, two Pentagon officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who worked on Iraq policy for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, met secretly with Ghorbanifar to discuss Iran.
I wish I could say more but it will have to wait for a few more days. But you can see where this is going. Anyhow, I am not sure Franklin really was the official in Feith's shop who had particularly close ties to Chalabi. I seriously wonder if Franklin is bait.
Update V: Thanks to Jonathan at Daily Kos for the link. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
