| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:11 am Post subject: James Bamford on MSNBC 'Hardball' about 'A Pretext for War' |
| http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5443572
Coming up: the reasons for war. A British report find its pre-war intelligence on Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction relied in part on seriously flawed sources. James Bamford will be here.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. On a day when insurgents gunned down an Iraqi governor and a car bomb killed at least 10 people in Baghdad, another report finds that Iraq had no significant stocks of chemical or biological weapons before the war. A just-released British report concludes that British intelligence on Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction program was flawed, but it absolved the British government of deliberate distortion and culpable negligence. Despite this, Prime Minister Tony Blair took personal responsibility for the flawed intelligence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I have to accept, as the months have passed, it seems increasingly clear that at the time of invasion, Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: So why did both American and British intelligence get it wrong on Iraq? James Bamford is author of the book “A Pretext for War:
9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America‘s Intelligence Agencies”
James, let me ask you the question why both we and the British got it wrong in the same way? We thought he had lots of weapons of mass destruction.
JAMES BAMFORD, AUTHOR, “A PRETEXT FOR WAR”: Again, I think both the reasons are the same for both of them. They both wanted the war. They pushed the war as hard as they could. They pushed every excuse they could for having this war. And the intelligence community pretty much on both—both in Britain and the United States, went along. One of the people I interviewed at CIA said the supervisor of one of the units looking for the weapons of mass destruction called all his group together and said, Look, if the president wants a war, it‘s your job to give him a reason to go to war. And I think that‘s the kind of pressure there was.
MATTHEWS: Who said that?
BAMFORD: It was supervisor of one of the units looking for weapons of mass destruction at the CIA.
MATTHEWS: Well, I‘ve been thinking about this for the last day or so, flying on a plane from California. And my simple question was, was that it we were taken in by flawed intelligence or that we were so determined to go to war, we‘re willing to take risky and uncertain intelligence to justify it?
BAMFORD: Well, it was both. And the ironic thing was at the time we went to war, we had more intelligence agents on the ground in Iraq than anywhere else in the world. We had all those inspectors, and they were going everywhere. We were having U-2 planes flying overhead. We had all the list of places that had suspected weapons, and rather than having the inspectors go there and look for them, the Bush administration pulled them out. And we went to war, and now we‘re paying the price.
MATTHEWS: Tony Blair was pretty dramatic in selling the war to his own people—and to us, because we always like Tony Blair. Americans like the Brits, usually, generally. He said there was biological weapon could have hit Britain in 45 minutes.
BAMFORD: That was an outrageous claim.
MATTHEWS: Where‘d he get such a specific time?
BAMFORD: Well, there was a report that he read from one of the intelligence organizations. But again, like in the United States, they didn‘t put the caveats in there.
MATTHEWS: Like, did they have the weapons? How‘s that for a caveat?
BAMFORD: They didn‘t—if they had the weapons, if they were available, if they were ready to be fired, they could have done that. But the problem was, they didn‘t have the weapons, they weren‘t ready and they weren‘t ready to fire. So no, it couldn‘t have happened in 45 minutes.
MATTHEWS: I‘m wondering whether all this intel, the bad intel that went to the British government, Tony Blair, and to our president, all came from the same garbage dump of bad intel. According to the British report today, some of this bad intel they had was received from another government‘s intelligence agency, and it was seriously flawed. Could it be we‘re all dipping out of the same bad well when it comes to info? Like the INC, the Iraqi National Congress, other people supporting the war?
BAMFORD: Exactly. In Israel, there were two commissions that came out, and both of them concluded that Israel didn‘t have any good intelligence. And they were passing that on to the United States. We got bad intelligence from the Italian intelligence service on Niger that led to the suspicion that Saddam was buying nuclear material from West Africa. So there was a lot of bad intelligence floating around.
MATTHEWS: Were we? Was that true?
BAMFORD: No. They found there was no evidence that he was buying...
MATTHEWS: So no ability to hit us in 45 minutes, no uranium bought in Africa, no mobile biological weapons, no nuclear program. I mean...
BAMFORD: No connections to al Qaeda.
MATTHEWS: No connections to—it seems like they batted zero, in baseball terminology, a zero.
BAMFORD: A zero, and people are paying with their lives now for that
· that bad move, where they could have left the inspectors in there and nobody would have been killed, at this point.
MATTHEWS: A couple questions, lingering questions here. And you‘re the expert with your book, “A Pretext for War,” James. Let me ask you this. Why did the British still hang onto that Niger notion, that uranium was going to be bought by the Iraqi government in Niger in Africa?
BAMFORD: Well, they‘re claiming that they have independent sources beyond the forged documents. And they‘ve never revealed those sources, and theoretically, they haven‘t told the CIA what those sources are, which seems incredible to me. So they‘re claiming they have this information, but they‘re not willing to give up the...
MATTHEWS: So they won‘t die on that one.
BAMFORD: ... the information...
MATTHEWS: They‘ll never give that one up.
BAMFORD: They aren‘t even giving it to the CIA.
MATTHEWS: So everybody basically agrees that there‘s no WAD there, except two people. They‘re still saying there‘s something to this uranium deal. And Dick Cheney says there‘s still a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, and he suggested it‘s a prominent, important connection. It‘s not just they met once in a while, but they were connected in the operations, which would suggest they had something to do with 9/11, the Iraqi government.
BAMFORD: Well, I would suggest that he come—hold a press conference and tell the public because there are American that are dying every day on there on this phony intelligence. And if he has some real intelligence, he should tell people what it is instead of being very coy about it.
MATTHEWS: Why do you think he‘s doing it?
BAMFORD: Well, he has a base out there, and he‘s got to give the base something to go on. The base has very little, his political base—very little to go on, at this point, so he‘s got to give them something. So you hear on the Rush Limbaugh show or something that the vice president is saying that there still is a connection. And those people, if they hear their only news from the Rush Limbaugh show, they‘re going to believe it.
MATTHEWS: Were we facing any real threat from Iraq?
BAMFORD: No. Every report that‘s come out has said that we haven‘t been facing any threat from Iraq. Iraq had nothing to threaten us with.
MATTHEWS: Well, why did our people think so?
BAMFORD: Well...
MATTHEWS: Do you think they deluded themselves? Do you think Colin
Powell deluded himself? Do you think Rumsfeld deludes himself, Wolfowitz,
Feith, the whole gang? Do you think the administration sort of war cabinet
· do you believe all of them, including the president, said, We don‘t really believe this stuff, but we‘re going to force ourselves to believe it to sell this war?
BAMFORD: Well, I think they had planned this war long before the administration came to power. The neocons, particularly at the Pentagon, had dreamed up this plan in 1996 and were trying to give to it Israel, to Benjamin Netanyahu.
MATTHEWS: Yes, it‘s called the clean break...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Right. I know.
BAMFORD: They were working as consultants for him. And it never went anywhere. Netanyahu never did anything with it. And then September 11 came up, and all of a sudden, as one of the members of that group wrote, Crisis is our opportunity.
MATTHEWS: Was that Richard Perle?
BAMFORD: No, that was David Wurmser (ph), who...
MATTHEWS: Oh, Wurmser, Feith and Perle were all in on both, both trying to sell it to Netanyahu...
BAMFORD: That‘s right.
MATTHEWS: ... head of Likud at the time and head of the Israeli government, and also now head—trying to sell the same package of arguments to us.
BAMFORD: Well, they brought it with them, and they became...
MATTHEWS: Years later.
BAMFORD: ... high officials at the Pentagon, and they‘re the architects of the war.
MATTHEWS: I‘ve read all about it. Thank you for putting a lot of this in the book, James Bamford. The book‘s called “A Pretext for War:
9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America‘s Intelligence Agencies.”
Up next, Minnesota‘s traditionally—at least, it used to be a Democratic liberal state, but president Bush is hoping to steal it away from the Republicans this time—for the Republicans. We‘ll talk to Minnesota‘s governor, Tim Pawlenty.
You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: This half-hour on HARDBALL, battleground | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:13 am Post subject: More on 'A Pretext for War' |
| Jason Vest for 'The Nation' publication:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
Robert Fisk mentions the above referenced 'Men from JINSA and CSP'
article (in which Mr. Gaffney is mentioned as well) in the following
article from the London Independent:
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm
JINSA/PNAC Zionist extremists (who were for the Iraq
invasion/occupation) are profiting from Iraq reconstruction as you can read in the Los Angeles Times article via the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/the-americas/2004/07/15/advocates-of-war-now-profit-from-iraq-s-reconstruction.php
James Bamford just appeared on MSNBC's 'Hardball' television program
in the USA last night as I would very much like for him to be
interviewed on the BBC as well about his excellent new book ('A Pretext for War'). Additional information about Mr. Bamford's new book ('A
Pretext for War') appears after the following two URLs:
'The Lie Factory' article:
http://www.mojones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html
'The New Pentagon Papers':
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5829.htm
Here is the link for James Bamford's new book ('A Pretext for War'):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/06/14/iraq-war-for-israel-according-to-james-bamford-s-new-book.php
The following is a transcript of an interview with James Bamford:
SHOW: Fresh Air (12:00 Noon PM ET) - NPR
June 8, 2004 Tuesday
LENGTH: 5443 words
HEADLINE: James Bamford discusses his book, "A Pretext for War"
ANCHORS: TERRY GROSS
BODY:
TERRY GROSS, host:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.
My guest, James Bamford, is the author of the new book, "A Pretext for
War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies." He
writes about weaknesses in American intelligence before 9/11,
reconstructs how the military and the Bush administration responded on 9/11,
explores the motivations behind the invasion of Iraq and charges that
intelligence agencies were pressured to come up with findings that would
justify the invasion. Bamford has written extensively about national
security issues and is the author of two best-selling books about the highly
secretive National Security Agency, "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of
Secrets."
The United States ha! s turned against Ahmad Chalabi, who was the head
of the Iraqi National Congress and who, at one time, was a likely
leader of the new Iraq. What is some of the information that we got from him
that turned out to be false?
Prof. JAMES BAMFORD (Author, "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the
Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies"): Well, Chalabi supplied a
number of defectors to the United States that provided false information.
Some of the information came from defectors that indicated that the
Iraqis had these bioweapons labs, which raised a lot of concern at the time
and a lot of media coverage but turned out to be false. The few
vehicles they did find ended up not being for biological warfare but for, I
think, developing helium for balloons of some sort, weather balloons or
launching systems or something. But they certainly didn't have to do
with biological weapons labs. So that was part of the problem.
A lot of the information that came from the people he supplie! d was
false. And a number of people suspect that the key reason Chalabi kept
pushing these people on the US and also on the press--but I think one of
the primary motives behind Ahmad Chalabi was to get himself put in as
the president of Iraq. He had been wanting that for years and years and
years. And as I write in my book, he had known many of the
neoconservatives in the Bush administration for more than a decade and had become
very good friends with them. And they were very much supporting his
taking over Iraq. And then they would have had their own puppet in there.
GROSS: Some of the money that actually helped support Chalabi went
through a group called the Rendon Group, which was backed by the CIA. What
was the Rendon Group?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, the Rendon Group is one of these sort of shadowy,
private companies that do a lot of clandestine work for the CIA and
other parts of the government. And the Rendon Group specializes in
disinformation campaigns; it ran ! an anti-Saddam disinformation campaign for
a number of years. And it's been used by the United States in many
conflicts to broadcast the US message and to help eliminate the message of
whoever the United States is opposing. So its background is basically
used by the government in a lot of sort of clandestine
information-operations activities.
GROSS: So, in this case, the Rendon Group was hired to turn world
opinion against Saddam Hussein?
Prof. BAMFORD: That's right, yeah. This was after the Gulf War. And
the CIA put a fair amount of money into it, and they really wanted to
change the view of the world towards Saddam Hussein.
GROSS: So with the help of the CIA, Chalabi became a real force in
terms of, you know, informing or misinforming people about what was
happening in Iraq and a real force in terms of being groomed as a future
leader of Iraq. But at some point the CIA started to turn against him. Why?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, the CIA started havi! ng problems with both
accountability of money and, also, the information he was providing. And it
didn't look like he was in control of as much people and groups as he
claimed he was, so the CIA turned away from him in the mid-1990s.
Largely it was over issues of credibility, money and information.
GROSS: And you say that eventually he got support from a group of
neoconservatives, including three people who became national security
advisers to President George W. Bush: Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David
Wurmser. They drew up a plan that, you say, became a blueprint for the
war in Iraq. The plan was actually drawn up for Israel and for then
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; he had hired them as
consultants. What was the plan that they came up with for him?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, the plan actually that they came up for Israel,
for Netanyahu, to implement was very similar to what the plan was that
we ended up implementing as we went into war with Iraq. ! And that was
to overthrow Saddam Hussein and replace him with somebody friendly to
both the United States and Israel. Part of the original plan, the one
that they had proposed for Israel, involved not just Iraq but also
invading Syria and Lebanon. And one of the reasons that they wanted to give
for doing that was, basically, a pretext to get the US on board and to
get the US public support. And they were going to announce that part of
the reason that they were doing this was to try to eradicate the drug
dealing that's going on in Lebanon and, also, to look for weapons of mass
destruction. And another reason was to eliminate counterfeiting of US
money that was going on there. So there was a number of pretexts that
they were going to use to justify their invasion of Syria and Lebanon.
GROSS: Netanyahu rejected this plan. Do you know why?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, I don't think he thought it was in Israel's
interest to go to war with three of its neighbors at that point. It ! was a
very--it would have been an extremely adventurous move for the Israeli
government to launch a war on a number of its fronts, especially
without any real provocation. None of these countries were invading Israel.
And I think Netanyahu felt he had enough on his plate without declaring
a Middle East war.
GROSS: Now how do you think that report figures into the American
invasion of Iraq?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, the way it figures in is that the key people
behind this initial report back in 1996, which was called "A Clean
Break"--that was their title for it--were three of the key players who ended up
implementing this war in Iraq that we're having right now. And that was
Richard Perle, who became head of the Defense Policy Board, which is a
very major player in declaring policy for the US government in terms of
the Department of Defense, and Douglas Feith, who now is the
number-three man in the Pentagon, basically, the undersecretary of Defense for
policy. And his j! ob is creating policy; he's responsible for much of
the war planning and the post-war planning. And the third person is David
Wurmser, who was originally with the State Department and now is Vice
President Cheney's Middle East adviser.
So these three players played a major role in the run-up to the war in
Iraq after the September 11th attacks. And they were the same three
major players who were the key people behind this "Clean Break" report,
which was the original report to Israel suggesting that the Israeli
government launch this war against Iraq and several of its other neighbors.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is James Bamford. He's
written extensively about intelligence in America and particularly about
the National Security Agency. His new book is called "A Pretext for War:
9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."
Now we've been talking about Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and David
Wurmser, three national security advi! sers to President George W. Bush,
and their role in advocating war in Iraq. What was their connection to
Ahmad Chalabi?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, actually, Terry, the connection between these
people and Ahmad Chalabi goes back a long ways. Chalabi had known Richard
Perle and the deputy Defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, for a long,
long time, more than 10 years, maybe up to 15 years. They got to know each
other through a mutual fund, Albert Wohlstetter, who was a professor at
the University of Chicago. And he introduced several of these people
together. Chalabi had actually been a student of Wohlstetter, and
Wohlstetter knew both Perle and Wolfowitz very well. So they all got to know
each other in the late '80s, and from then on they thought that Chalabi
was an ideal candidate to take over Iraq. For a long time Chalabi had
been groomed, basically, to be the next president of Iraq, as soon as
they were able to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
GROSS: Now what were some of the disagreements between the
neoconservatives, who you've been describing, and the CIA about Chalabi and what
his role should be in Iraq?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, I think the major disagreements were that the CIA
felt that Chalabi wasn't trustworthy; that he didn't really control
very many people; that he didn't have very much support within Iraq. He'd
left Iraq when he was 12 years old and hadn't really been back there
since. And the CIA had a lot of other things on its agenda. It was
looking for other ways to have a coup in Iraq. It wanted, basically, a coup
among generals to take over the country from Saddam Hussein and not have
this uprising led by Ahmad Chalabi. And that was the main difference.
The neocons, led by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, pretty much, were
pushing to have Chalabi lead this massive insurrection.
But the CIA looked at it largely like what happened on the Bay of
Pigs, where originally the Eisenhower administration, later the Kennedy
administration, came up with this plan to put a small group of rebels in
the country that would inspire this much larger revolution and overthrow
Castro. And it turned out to be an enormous debacle, and I think that's
one of the things that they were afraid of with Chalabi.
GROSS: My guest is James Bamford, author of the new book "A Pretext
for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."
We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is James Bamford. And he's
written extensively about intelligence in the United States, including
the National Security Agency. His new book is called "A Pretext for
War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."
You write a lot about how information was cherry-picked to make the
case for war. I mean, your title of the book is "A Pretext for War." You
write how one CIA officer, who was one of your sources! , said
that--and he was, by the way, in a unit charged with finding weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. He said that his boss said, 'If President Bush wants
to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so.' Can you
tell us about what he described to you about this?
Prof. BAMFORD: Yes. This person was a former case officer. The person
went through the farm, the training school. And this person, this case
officer, was outraged. And there was no evidence of weapons of mass
destruction. I interviewed a lot of people at the CIA, and not one of them
came up with any hard information saying that there was any indications
of weapons of mass destruction before we went to war. And there was a
tremendous amount of pressure, on the other hand, from the vice
president's office, from Cheney's office, to come up with something. He went
through the CIA a number of times, and according to one of the people at
CIA I interviewed, the implication was that they were supposed to find
something and preferably something nuclear. So there was a lot of
pressure from outside the agency on the agency to come up with something to
justify the war.
GROSS: Do you think it would have been appropriate for, say, George
Tenet to protect his men from that kind of pressure to find something
that didn't seem to be there? You could also argue that it was right to
press them to find this because it might have been there, and it was
their job to find it if there was any chance that it existed, you know. So
that pressure would be pressuring them to find that needle in the
haystack, even if it was only a needle.
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, there's automatically a lot of pressure on them
to find something. The problem comes when you push somebody to justify a
war by finding something that isn't there, and I think that's the
problem that we had. George Tenet, at the very beginning, seemed to stand up
against the administration at the early stages during the summer and!
fall of 2002. There was a point where the administration was trying to
push the issue of Saddam doing a deal with people in Niger, a West
African country, for uranium in order to build up a nuclear weapons supply
in Iraq. And at first George Tenet fought against that. He argued that
the president should have that reference to the Niger nuclear deal taken
out of his public, nationwide address in Cincinnati in October of 2002.
So that took a lot of gumption, basically, to stand up against the
White House and say--basically, demand that it be taken out of his speech.
But then after that it seemed like George Tenet pretty much gave up
and sort of threw up his hands and said, 'I'm not going to fight this
anymore.' I mean, that was the impression I got because he never again
took a strong stance on something like that. And you could see it just a
few months later during the president's State of the Union address,
where that same reference was put back in. And this time George Ten! et not
only didn't fight against it; he didn't even bother reading the
president's State of the Union address, which is rather extraordinary
considering that we're about to go to war based on what the president is saying
during his State of the Union address and the director of Central
Intelligence doesn't even bother to read the address.
So it seemed to me that at some point there around October of 2002,
George Tenet, after his sort of battle with the White House over taking
out the Niger material from the Cincinnati speech, kind of threw up his
hands and said, 'OK, you win. I give up,' and from then on became a
team player with the White House and the hard-core neoconservatives.
GROSS: Do you have any inside information from your sources about the
American secrets that Ahmad Chalabi is alleged to have given to Iran?
You know, we've been reading in the newspapers that he's alleged to have
told Iran that the United States had broken its code and that,
therefore, we! were able to interpret certain Iranian intelligence secrets;
that means Iran would now change its code, and we'd no longer have access
to that source of information.
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, I do know that the National Security Agency spent
many, many years trying to break the Iranian code. It was a very, very
difficult cipher system to break. And code-breaking these days is a
very, very difficult occupation, having written two books on the National
Security Agency. The problem is that the crypto systems these days are
extremely complex and very hard. The basic way that the NSA had to
break that code, the Iranian cipher, was by using people to penetrate the
organization. The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad--that's where it was
penetrated. And they used people, basically code clerks, to get in there and
do things to the crypto system to make it usable for NSA.
One of the things that's done these days is to try to bug a keyboard.
If you could bug the keyboard, then you're b! ugging the system before
the information actually gets encrypted. Or else bug the monitor, or
you could bug a power cord. You could do various things that way. And
apparently that was one of the things that they had done, one of those
ways of tapping into the Iranian communications system.
So the loss of that information, which allegedly Ahmad Chalabi gave to
the Iranian government, was tremendously detrimental to the United
States because whether the NSA will be able to redo that again is almost
impossible to say. The NSA tries very hard breaking these codes, and if
somebody gives that code away, then it could be years or decades or
never before they're ever able to break that code again. And if you
remember World War II, the biggest success that we had during World War II in
terms of intelligence was breaking the German Enigma code. So those
things are very frail. And if somebody like Chalabi, if he's allegedly
accused of doing, gave the information that the US had broke! n that
encryption system to the Iranian government, then the US could be without
any intelligence on Iran for many years.
GROSS: Do you think that Chalabi is now out of the game in Iraq, or is
he trying to reinvent himself now that he no longer has American
backing?
Prof. BAMFORD: Well, Chalabi, if anything, he's certainly a survivor.
He's been surviving for years and years and years in northern Iran and
living in London and making deals with these neoconservatives. So he's
a dealmaker and a survivor. And I think right now he's trying to sort
of capitalize on the fact that the US is dissing him at this point by
saying, 'Look, I'm not one of these US stooges, and I can be trusted.'
And he's trying to capitalize on that and use it to his advantage to
become one of the elected, if not the elected, president of Iraq when these
elections are due sometime before next January.
GROSS: That would be the ultimate paradox, wouldn't it, if he became
the president of th! e new Iraq based on his self-description of not
being an American stooge, of being in opposition to America?
Prof. BAMFORD: And I'm sure there'll be a lot of people thinking
conspiracy theories; that this has been sort of a Machiavellian way of
planning the whole thing all along. He was getting nowhere because he was
looked at as an Iraqi stooge, and all of a sudden he's completely
disgraced in the United States and then he succeeds in becoming president.
And, you know, to think that that was part of the plot would be very
Machiavellian, right? So it's a little beyond my comprehension at this time,
but stranger things have happened.
GROSS: James Bamford is the author of "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq
and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies." He's a distinguished
visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He'll
be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is
FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
(Announce! ments)
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: Coming up, Lloyd Schwartz considers the music from the 1956
film "Around the World in 80 Days," which is now out on DVD. And we
continue our conversation with James Bamford, author of "A Pretext for War."
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with James Bamford,
author of the new book "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of
America's Intelligence Agencies." He's written extensively about national
security issues, including two best-selling books about the National
Security Agency, "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets."
Let's talk a little bit about September 11th. You write in your book
about some of the things that happened within American intelligence on
that day. Let's start with the fact that two flight attendants on one of
the planes had managed to call I guess it was the FAA and tell them
what seats were empty. And that gave a lot of information about who the
passengers were, who were actually the hostage-takers, who were actually
hijacking the plane. What information did they give, and how could the
intelligence agencies have used that to figure out who was responsible
for what was going on?
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, these flight attendants were extremely courageous.
And they were speaking from a phone back in the rear section of the
plane, and one of them contacted a ground person in American Airlines back
in Boston and another contacted a different person. And they were both
talking to different people giving an idea of what was going on on the
plane. And it was extremely useful for the intelligence community
because they gave the seat numbers, and the US pretty much immediately got
the manifest. So they were able to tell very quickly who some of these
people were after the event by getting the numbers of the seats where
these passengers, the people who were hijacking the plane, were sitting.
In addition to that, the! flight attendants were able to give a great
deal of information about how the hijacking took place. Apparently, the
hijackers, when they first came on the plane, they had a--among the
things they had hidden were these boxes with wires hanging out of them. So
apparently in addition to having knives, they had a phony bomb,
something that looked like a bomb, that they could threaten the crew or the
pilot and the co-pilot with. Also, when they went up to the very front
part of the plane, they threw everybody out of the first-class section,
and then they sprayed that area with something like--some kind of
chemical that forced everybody out and made sure nobody would come back into
that section, at least for a while.
So the flight attendants were able to give that information, which was
very valuable. And they were talking to the ground people right up
until the moment the plane hit. And as the plane was getting nearer--well,
actually, as it was flying low over New York City, th! ey were saying,
'The plane is flying very low. We're over New York City.' And they
described the direction of the plane, and then everything went quiet as the
plane just hit the building.
GROSS: What was the military response as the planes were flying toward
their targets?
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, the US was not prepared for this at all. The US at
that point was defended by seven--or actually, 14 aircraft at seven
different air bases, seven air bases that had two fighter planes each. And
all the NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, the group that's
supposed to look for early warning, was looking outward; they were
looking outside the United States at something coming in. So they didn't
even have the equipment to look at what was taking place in real time
within the United States. So the US posture at that moment was extremely
advantageous to the hijackers. And right after the hijacking, the US
went into an enormously chaotic period.
GROSS: Well, let's ge! t to where President Bush was. He was in the
classroom reading to children there. In your book you're very critical of
President Bush during the time that he's in the classroom reading to
students there on September 11th, and you think that there's things he
could have done. You criticize him for being slow to react.
Mr. BAMFORD: Yes. One of the things that's interesting is that he's
told a number of audiences--and I think it was on his Web site at one
point; it might still be there--his version of how he learned about the
attack that morning. And he says that prior to going into the class, he
was brought into sort of an anteroom to be told about the first plane
hitting. And he saw the plane hitting the World Trade Center on the TV
monitor in the room. The problem is that couldn't possibly be true
because the video of that first plane hitting the World Trade Center wasn't
available until at least that night, if not the next morning. There was
no video of the first plane ! hitting the World Trade Center, so he
couldn't have seen that. And it's curious as to why he continually says
that. So if he actually saw a plane hit the World Trade Center on the
monitor, it had to have been the second plane that hit, in which case he
would have known that two planes had hit the World Trade Center before
he actually went into the classroom.
What transpired after that was that he went into the classroom. He was
there for a few minutes. And then his chief of staff, Andrew Card, came
in and whispered in his ear that a second plane had hit the World Trade
Center and that the United States is under attack. And at that point,
video cameras were on President Bush, and he had this very perplexed
look on his face. What's ironic is that he says later that at that moment
he decided to declare war. Yet it was actually seven minutes that he
continued to sit there. He never once asked, 'What's the intelligence?
Where's the secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Jo! int Chiefs
of Staff? What's our readiness? What's NORAD know about all this?' He
never asked any of these questions. He just continued to sit there.
Now seven minutes is a long time, especially when you consider that
these planes are flying around; they're hitting the World Trade Center,
they're flying towards the Pentagon, they're flying towards the White
House or the Capitol. And it was amazing how little was done in
that--moments after the president was notified that the US is under terrorist
attack. And he says himself that, 'I decided to declare war.'
GROSS: My guest is James Bamford, author of the new book "A Pretext
for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."
We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: James Bamford is my guest, and he's written extensively about
US intelligence agencies, especially the National Security Agency. His
new book is called "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Ir! aq and the Abuse of
America's Intelligence Agencies."
There was a group established within the CIA called Alex Station. And
the sole job of this group was to learn about bin Laden. You say it's
the first time there was a group within the CIA devoted not to studying
a country but focusing on one person. What you're critical of is the
decision within this group not to try to penetrate al-Qaeda by sending
somebody undercover, and that was an intentional decision. What was that
decision based on?
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, the CIA had a long history of not using its own
people to penetrate terrorist groups. I thought it was not a very
far-sighted idea. It was based, basically, just on tradition. And if you look
back, J. Edgar Hoover, when he ran the FBI, had sort of a similar
philosophy. He never used FBI agents to--undercover operations to penetrate
the Mafia, for example. He never wanted FBI agents to take off their
white shirt and ties. And it wasn't till after he died that! the FBI began
actually penetrating the Mafia, a very dangerous job, and actually
having great successes at it.
And the NS--I'm sorry, the CIA, at this point, was in that same
situation where they had always wanted to depend on foreign services, what
they call liaison services--the Pakistani intelligence, for example, or
ex-mujaheddin--to collect intelligence for it without training its own
people to go in there. And the problem you have is when you're depending
on a group like the Pakistani intelligence service or a group of
ex-mujaheddin, which the CIA used in Afghanistan in the period leading up to
September 11th, they couldn't trust these people. They had a lot of
doubts about whether the information they were getting from them was true.
There was nobody there to supervise them. The Pakistani intelligence
had reasons to deceive the United States because they were involved in
setting up the Taliban government in the first place. And then the
ex-mujaheddin, who the CIA had! hired to try to find bin Laden, were just
these sort of ex-Afghan fighters who had experience fighting the Russians
about a decade earlier but had very little other training.
And so, ironically--and this is one of the biggest ironies of the
entire events leading up to September 11th--at the very time the CIA was
not even trying to penetrate al-Qaeda, eight Americans had already joined
al-Qaeda and were training at one of Osama bin Laden's bases in
Afghanistan. One of those was John Walker Lindh, but there are about seven
other native-born Americans who had also joined up. And in my book
"Pretext for War," I trace the whole events of John Walker Lindh and how he
got into Afghanistan and how he became a member of al-Qaeda. And it's
almost a blueprint of what the CIA should have done to try to get somebody
in there. He went to Yemen; he studied the Koran there. He learned
Arabic. Then he was sent to one of the religious schools in Pakistan and
became very familiar with the cult! ure over there and was liked by some
of the people at the religious school. And then they sent him on to a
training school for mujaheddin for guerrilla fighters that were fighting
against the Indian government in Kashmir. And after that he said he
didn't want to fight in Kashmir; he wanted to fight in Afghanistan.
So they gave him a letter of introduction. He went to Afghanistan, and
he went to the Taliban office in Kabul. And they said that his language
skills weren't quite good enough to join the Taliban to fight the
Northern Alliance, but that there was another group down the street that
might be good, because he spoke good Arabic, but he didn't speak very good
Pashtun or Dari. So they sent him down to al-Qaeda, which was down the
street. And he went down there, and he said he wanted to fight the
Northern Alliance. And I think it was about 40 minutes or whatever he was
only in there, and they said, 'Fine.' And they sent him to a little
halfway house, until they had enough! people after a day or two to put on a
bus. And they took them all to this bin Laden training camp. And while
he was there, he had a number of one-on-one meetings, as well as the
other Americans, with bin Laden himself and so forth.
So it's ironic that these people, without even trying, were able to
penetrate and actually get into the bin Laden training camps. And they
were never required to kill anybody. They never were killed if they said
they were going to leave. One person didn't like it and decided to
leave halfway through, and they said, 'Fine.' And they just went back to
the United States. So it's tragic and ironic at the same time that the
CIA never did the same type of clandestine activity that John Walker
Lindh did, which was learn Arabic, study the Koran, get acclimated to the
culture and attempt to penetrate al-Qaeda.
GROSS: You've devoted most of your career to studying American
intelligence agencies. You have a lot of sources inside intelligence agenci!
es. And I'm wondering what your confidence level is now in American
intelligence?
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, it's not very good because the intelligence, when I
was writing about my last two books, were written during periods that
we weren't really focused on terrorism as much. The first book I wrote,
"The Puzzle Palace," back in 1982, we were in the middle of the Cold
War. And the US was doing a very good job in terms of collecting
intelligence on the Russians and what was happening. But they had 50 years of
practice practically, and they had a target that wasn't moving anywhere.
And they knew pretty much that the only attack was going to come from
missiles, so we had satellites overhead that could watch these missiles
24 hours a day.
The period now, though, however, after September 11th with terrorism
being the top of the agenda, the intelligence community is not really
set up to do that kind of thing. They're not set up to follow people
around the world very easily. It's! very easy to hide if you really want to
hide these days. You can have cell phones that you could throw away
after several uses. You can have calling cards that don't give any
indication as to who the person is that's making the phone call. And there's
all sorts of ways that a person can really hide, as you can see from
Osama bin Laden and even Saddam Hussein, who we were after for a very,
very long time, and we occupied his country. He stayed hidden for many,
many months before the United States was able to locate him. So finding
terrorists is a very difficult prospect for the intelligence community,
and the prospects are not very good.
GROSS: James Bamford is the author of "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq
and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies."
I want to let you know that on Friday's show, we're going to remember
the soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. He died of cancer Friday at the age
of 69. We'll listen back to a 1997 interview with Lacy. Here's what he!
sounded like. This is a 1996 recording of "Evidence," by Thelonious
Monk, the composer and musician who most influenced Lacy. Misha Mengelberg
is featured on piano.
(Soundbite of "Evidence")
GROSS: Coming up, Lloyd Schwartz listens to the music from the film,
"Around the World in 80 Days," which has been released on DVD. This is
FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
LOAD-DATE: June 9, 2004 | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 5:36 am Post subject: Democracy and the Washington Neocons - a marriage of conveni |
| Democracy and the Washington Neocons - a marriage of convenience
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:15:48 -0400 From: "David Chiang"
<chiang.d@worldnet.att.net>
Democracy and the neocons: a marriage of convenience
By Jim Lobe Wednesday, July 21, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?article_ID=6453&categ_ID=5&edition_id=10
Of all the delusions that American neoconservatives perpetrated in
their drive
to take the US to war in Iraq, the most durable was the notion that
they were
committed to the spread of Wilsonian democracy. As someone who has
watched the
neocon movement over the past 30 years or so, I find this hard to
accept.
My skepticism is based on several factors, including the obvious
selectivity
of the neocons. After all, one has only to look at their support for
authoritarian regimes in Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Jordan - as
opposed
to their eagerness to invade Iraq in the name of bringing democratic
rule
there - to find some glaring inconsistencies. At the same time, it is
the
neocons who pushed hardest for US President George W. Bush to cease
dealing
with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, though he was
elected by a
substantial majority of eligible voters in the West Bank and Gaza.
Indeed,
neocon hard-liners like former Pentagon official Richard Perle believe
Palestinians should be denied self-determination altogether.
Without doubt, neocons have long professed a devotion to democracy.
Indeed,
their main argument in favor of a US strategic alliance with Israel - a
central and persistent tenet of the neoconservative creed over the past
three
decades - has been the Jewish state's status as the lone democratic
outpost in
a region of seething and hate-filled Arab autocracies. The question,
however,
is whether democracy promotion, especially in the Arab world, ranks
anywhere
nearly as high in the neocons' policy priorities as their commitment to
Israeli security. And to the extent that they may perceive a potential
conflict between the two, which one are they inclined to choose as the
more important?
A brief look at the historical record may help provide an answer. While
the
neocon movement sprouted wings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as
Israel
found itself increasingly isolated at the UN, neoconservatives first
tasted
real power under former President Ronald Reagan, who was especially
taken with
Jeane Kirkpatrick's attacks on Jimmy Carter's human rights policies.
According
to her, these were disastrously undermining "friendly authoritarian"
regimes
in Iran, Nicaragua, South America, and even apartheid South Africa -
all
governments enjoying friendly relations with Israel. Instead of
hectoring such
regimes on reform, she argued, Washington should have provided them
with
unstinting support as allies in the global struggle against Soviet
communism,
both because Moscow was the far greater evil, and because authoritarian
regimes could become "democracies," while "totalitarian" ones could
not.
Reagan applied these ideas. During his first term, Washington not only
renewed
military and other forms of support to "friendly authoritarians," but
also
began the Reagan Doctrine - the sponsorship of right-wing "freedom
fighters,"
such as jihadists in Afghanistan, tribal nationalists in Angola and
ex-National Guard figures in Nicaragua, who distinguished themselves
more by
fanaticism and brutality than by the democratic arts. At the same time,
neocons were ecstatic with Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon - not
because it
furthered the cause of democracy, but because it meant the expulsion of
the
PLO from Lebanon and a shift in the regional balance of power against
Soviet-backed Syria.
So, if neocons were not big democracy boosters during their period of
greatest
influence under Reagan, when did they discover their religion? Most
analysts
date their conversion to the last half of the 1980s, when the "people
power"
movement ousted Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and when Chilean
strongman
Augusto Pinochet was defeated in a referendum to extend his rule. In
both
cases, prominent neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams
were
serving at the top of the State Department bureaus dealing with Asian
and
South American affairs. Neocon pundits were quick to embrace these
perceived
deviations from the "Kirkpatrick doctrine" as a necessary correction,
particularly in light of the winding down of the Cold War.
While Wolfowitz and Abrams sided with those who wanted to remove the
two
"friendly authoritarians," so did a significant number of Republican
lawmakers, some of them classic realists like Senator Richard Lugar,
who had
already broken with Reagan and the neocons over their support for South
Africa. In that respect, the neocons were as much fellow travelers as
they
were in the vanguard, as they like to claim.
The neocon record throughout the 1990s reinforced this conclusion.
Contrary to
myth, neocons, including Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary today
who is
widely considered the most Wilsonian on the neocon spectrum, did not
urge
former President George H. W. Bush to plant democracy in Baghdad during
the
1991 Gulf War. And although neocons did join with liberal hawks in
calling for
"humanitarian interventions" after the war, and subsequently in the
Balkans,
they remained well within what became the post-Cold War realist
consensus -
that elected, more or less democratic governments, so long as they were
not
hostile to the US, were to be preferred over "friendly authoritarians."
Thus, when the Algerian military abruptly canceled elections in
December 1991,
neither realists nor neocons objected, because the alternative was
thought
likely to bring to power an Islamist government potentially hostile to
the US,
and certainly to Israel. Indeed, in their book "An End to Evil"
published last
January, Richard Perle and David Frum cite Algeria as the reason why
they
support "democratization" in the Middle East, rather than "democracy"-
a
subtlety that would bring a smile even to the lips of ultimate realist
Henry Kissinger.
Similarly, when the neocons first began agitating for Saddam's removal
in
1995-96, their arguments were based entirely on classic realpolitik of
the
kind they used to defend Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Thus, a 1996
task force
advising Israeli candidate Benjamin Netanyahu, headed by Perle and that
also
included the Pentagon's current policy chief, Douglas Feith, as well as
David
Wurmser, a Middle East adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney, argued
that
ousting Saddam was the key to transforming the balance of power in the
Middle
East decisively in Israel's favor, permitting it to "break" with Oslo
and
dictate terms to Syria and the Palestinians.
A follow-up paper by Wurmser called for the region to be reorganized
according
to "tribal/clan/familial alliances" that would create a "more stable
balance
of power system." In 1998, when the neocons and Ahmad Chalabi were
steamrolling the Iraq Liberation Act through the US Congress, the
legislation's supporters, like the neocon-dominated Project for the New
American Century (PNAC), focused on the military threat posed by a
rearmed
Saddam. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,
when
PNAC warned that the failure to oust Saddam would constitute a
"decisive
surrender" to international terrorism, the democracy question was
simply
nowhere on the agenda.
It was only after the Afghanistan campaign that the neocons finally
began to
articulate the argument, denounced by one realist strategist as
"neo-crazy,"
that anti-American terrorism was caused by oppressive Arab autocracies,
and
that by invading and occupying the most oppressive such regime, in
Iraq, the
US could create a pro-Western, democratic government in the strategic
heart of
the Arab world that would, in turn, provoke sweeping regional change.
On the face of it, the argument has real appeal, particularly for the
more
idealistic neocons, such as Wolfowitz. To the increasingly pro-Likud
neocon
mainstream, however, it must sound like a great way to rally public
opinion
behind a war to permanently shift the balance of power in the Middle
East.
Jim Lobe is the correspondent of Inter Press Service in Washington.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thinking about Neoconservatism:
http://www.vdare.com/misc/macdonald_neoconservatism.htm | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:37 am Post subject: 9/11 Reforms Could Weaken Rights, Says White House |
| James Bamford mentions in his new book ('A Pretext for War') that the US terror problem is a direct result of US support (in the BILLIONS as you can see via the link at the upper left of www.wrmea.com ) for Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians. So why should we have to give up our civil liberties for support of Israel.. Instead, we should cut the aid going to Israel as the Constitution (Bill of Rights) is much more important than supporting Israel... CUT ISRAEL LOSE TO SAVE AMERICAN FREEDOM!!!!!
9/11 Reforms Could Weaken Rights, Says White House
By Maura Reynolds and Greg Miller Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration warned Friday that the two central reforms proposed by the Sept. 11 commission — creating a powerful intelligence chief and establishing a new counterterrorism center — may remove barriers protecting intelligence from political influence and undermine civil liberties.
• Latimes.com home page
• Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times
AP Photo
Slideshow: September 11
The president and his senior advisors are drafting initial orders on some of the commission's recommendations that could be issued as soon as next week. But action on the centerpiece reforms deserves more consideration, a senior White House official said.
"We need to, in considering each of these recommendations, place a premium and real attention on how to protect civil liberties while better safeguarding our homeland," the official said.
Similar concerns were expressed by senators Friday during the first congressional hearing on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations. The question of how to protect the independence of the intelligence community has become perhaps the most difficult dilemma for policymakers who are otherwise eager to embrace reform.
After getting off to a slow start, the White House also wants to appear responsive to the commission. A top-level White House task force — which has met nearly every day this week — conferred for two hours Friday to draw up executive orders on some of the simpler proposals. Those presidential actions will "go beyond" the panel's recommendations in some areas, the official said, declining to elaborate.
Civil rights advocates said they shared the White House's concerns, but questioned whether an administration that has been accused of weakening civil liberties was seizing on the privacy issue to delay action on proposals it dislikes.
As written, the commission report would allow domestic intelligence gathering, analysis and operations related to terrorism to be conducted from the White House. It also would locate the new intelligence chief inside the White House, which could make him or her more vulnerable to political influence.
The matter is particularly sensitive for the administration because of Democrats' accusations that White House pressure prompted the CIA (news - web sites) and other agencies to skew their prewar assessments of Iraq (news - web sites).
"We want to ensure that the intelligence operatives and analysts maintain their autonomy. That has to be a key consideration when you consider whether to place either of those" offices inside the White House, the official said.
The Sept. 11 commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said sweeping reforms were needed to protect the country against another catastrophic strike. But the administration and Congress are wary of lessons from the scandals of the 1970s and '80s, including the Nixon administration's use of the CIA and FBI (news - web sites) to dig up dirt on political enemies and the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra covert operation.
They also are mindful of lessons from the civil rights and Vietnam War eras, when the FBI kept dossiers on protesters.
In response to official excesses, Congress placed limits on the kinds of information that can be collected within the United States and the uses to which such intelligence may be put. Some of those protections were rescinded in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Members of both major parties fear the potential for similar abuse in putting a new intelligence director — with authority over covert operations overseas as well as domestic activities — in the president's inner circle.
"You sort of get into this Nixonian atmosphere, where the president now has all of these organs of government that he could use against political opponents," said a senior GOP official in Congress who asked not to be identified. "The Patriot Act is really a half-measure compared to where they're going with this."
The commission included 41 recommendations in its final report, but attention has fixed on the two main proposals: the elevation of a national intelligence director who would coordinate the activities of all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies and the creation of a counterterrorism center that would be in charge of operations and analysis in the war against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
Nearly three years after the attacks, commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton said, the intelligence community still is plagued by a confusing chain of command and persistent barriers to the sharing of crucial information.
"I do not find today anyone really in charge," Hamilton said during a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (news - web sites) hearing. "You can't possibly argue today that the CIA director is in charge of the intelligence community. That just doesn't stand up."
Friday's Senate hearing was the first of more than a dozen planned in Congress over the next month as part of an effort that is expected to lead to a historic restructuring of the intelligence community.
Committee members endorsed the idea of creating a new intelligence chief but questioned the wisdom of putting that position inside the White House.
Protecting intelligence analysts from political pressure "has been a problem throughout the course of recent decades, right up to the current time," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) (D-Mich.). "How does putting your proposed director in the White House, even closer than the current CIA director … do anything other than to make this problem even more difficult?"
Members of the Sept. 11 commission acknowledged that the arrangement raises concerns but defended their proposal, saying a new intelligence czar would need the clout that comes with being part of the White House's inner circle.
"Look, there's no magic solution here," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Every move you make has advantages and disadvantages."
Hamilton appeared alongside commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey. In testimony, both urged swift action on dozens of recommendations in the commission's final report, which was published last week.
The White House on Friday released a 21-page list of measures it says it has already taken to address many of the panel's recommendations. The senior White House official said quick action is coming on others but it would be unwise to rush consideration of the major restructuring.
"Given how complicated and how important an issue it is, I'm staggered at how quick people are to endorse wholesale the commission report without some considered reflection on it. That's what we're doing," the official said.
That remark appeared to be aimed in part at Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record), who has embraced the recommendations and said he would implement them in their entirety.
A Kerry spokesman, Phil Singer, said that did not imply that Kerry is unconcerned with potential civil liberties problems. Instead, he noted that one of the commission's recommendations is to create a board within the executive branch to ensure that civil liberties and privacy are protected.
Rights advocates expressed surprise and suspicion about what they called the administration's sudden concern with privacy issues. They described the administration's argument as ironic in light of the rollback in civil liberties it pushed in the USA Patriot Act.
"I wish they had had similar concerns about civil liberties before the Patriot Act," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites). "Of course, this newfound concern with civil liberties has to be taken with a grain of salt. The administration has shown a great disregard for civil liberties in the wake of 9/11, and it's a cynical ploy to trot out arguments on civil liberties when they don't like the findings of the 9/11 report." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 11:16 pm Post subject: Tensions Escalate Between Israel, Iran |
| This C-SPAN segment with James Bamford is a must watch.. Notice how Bamford responds to the call about Iran ('A Clean Break' was mentioned and then Bamford mentioned it again near the end of the broadcast)...
http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Series,WJE&ArchiveDays=30
Here is an AP article that just moved:
Tensions Escalate Between Israel, Iran
56 minutes ago
By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - Iran threatened this week to attack Israel's nuclear facilities. Israel ominously warned that it "knows how to defend itself." Tensions between the two arch enemies have suddenly escalated, underlining the other great enmity that has been bubbling on the sidelines of the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than two decades.
AP Photo
Suspicions that the Iranian regime is moving forward with a nuclear arms program deeply worry Israel, which considers Iran the greatest threat to the Jewish state. Israeli officials say they want to avoid escalating the situation, however, and there is no sign Israel is building up for an attack like the one that destroyed Iraq (news - web sites)'s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.
Experts say the two countries are unlikely to go to war anytime soon, despite the heated-up rhetoric coming out of Iran and the intensified efforts by Israel to isolate the Iranian regime diplomatically.
Iran and Israel once had close ties, but they have been foes since the 1979 revolution that ousted Iran's shah and installed an Islamic government. Iranian leaders routinely call for Israel's destruction, while Israelis accuse Iran of supporting anti-Israel terrorists.
The heightened tensions arose from the U.S.-led campaign to organize international pressure on Iran to rein in its nuclear program.
While recently confirming they are working with technology that can be used to produce weapons-grade uranium, the Iranians insist their program's sole purpose is the peaceful generation of power and angrily complain about being under siege.
Last month, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Iranians would "crush" Israel if it attacked the Persian state. Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, upped the ante this week, telling Al-Jazeera television that his government might launch pre-emptive strikes to protect its nuclear facilities if they were threatened.
"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," he said, adding that some Iranian generals believe the doctrine of pre-emption is "not limited to Americans."
The warning was seen as aimed at Israel, alluding to the Israeli strike on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s reactor two decades ago.
A senior Israeli official responded that Israel's government was ready for all eventualities.
"We're not seeking war with Iran. But if a real threat materializes, Israel will know how to defend itself," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reflecting long-standing Israeli policy of not talking publicly about matters involving nuclear arms.
Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, but never formally confirms or denies it has them. It believes this policy of ambiguity is the best way to deter attack, by scaring regional foes about the possibility of nuclear annihilation while denying those nations a rationale for also seeking such weapons.
Despite the tensions, experts don't foresee things boiling over.
"I think it is a serious confrontation. The issue is who can do what about it," said Cliff Kupchan, vice president of the Nixon Center in Washington and a former Clinton administration official who is an expert on Iran.
"On the Israeli side, it is not clear that they have the military capabilities or intelligence knowledge to significantly set back the Iranian program. The Iranians learned from Osirak to disperse and copy everything they have (in their nuclear program). I don't think that Israel can do much."
Sammy Salama, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, noted that the military situation is different, too.
"Iraq didn't have any way of striking back," Salama said, alluding to Iran's long-range Shahab-3 missiles, which are capable of reaching Israel. "I think Iran, in essence, is saying, 'We are not Iraq.'"
Friday, August 20, 2004 (AP)
Tensions escalating between arch enemies Israel and Iran
JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer
(08-20) 14:57 PDT JERUSALEM (AP) --
Iran threatened this week to attack Israel's nuclear facilities.
Israel
ominously warned that it "knows how to defend itself."
Tensions between the two arch enemies have suddenly escalated,
underlining
the other great enmity that has been bubbling on the sidelines of the
Arab-Israeli conflict for more than two decades.
Suspicions that the Iranian regime is moving forward with a nuclear
arms
program deeply worry Israel, which considers Iran the greatest threat
to
the Jewish state. Israeli officials say they want to avoid escalating
the
situation, however, and there is no sign Israel is building up for an
attack like the one that destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in
1981.
Experts say the two countries are unlikely to go to war anytime
soon,
despite the heated-up rhetoric coming out of Iran and the intensified
efforts by Israel to isolate the Iranian regime diplomatically.
Iran and Israel once had close ties, but they have been foes since
the
1979 revolution that ousted Iran's shah and installed an Islamic
government. Iranian leaders routinely call for Israel's destruction,
while
Israelis accuse Iran of supporting anti-Israel terrorists.
The heightened tensions arose from the U.S.-led campaign to organize
international pressure on Iran to rein in its nuclear program.
While recently confirming they are working with technology that can
be
used to produce weapons-grade uranium, the Iranians insist their
program's
sole purpose is the peaceful generation of power and angrily complain
about being under siege.
Last month, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said
Iranians
would "crush" Israel if it attacked the Persian state. Iranian Defense
Minister Ali Shamkhani, upped the ante this week, telling Al-Jazeera
television that his government might launch pre-emptive strikes to
protect
its nuclear facilities if they were threatened.
"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," he said,
adding
that some Iranian generals believe the doctrine of pre-emption is "not
limited to Americans."
The warning was seen as aimed at Israel, alluding to the Israeli
strike on
Saddam Hussein's reactor two decades ago.
A senior Israeli official responded that Israel's government was
ready for
all eventualities.
"We're not seeking war with Iran. But if a real threat materializes,
Israel will know how to defend itself," said the official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, reflecting long-standing Israeli policy of not
talking publicly about matters involving nuclear arms.
Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, but never
formally
confirms or denies it has them. It believes this policy of ambiguity is
the best way to deter attack, by scaring regional foes about the
possibility of nuclear annihilation while denying those nations a
rationale for also seeking such weapons.
Despite the tensions, experts don't foresee things boiling over.
"I think it is a serious confrontation. The issue is who can do what
about
it," said Cliff Kupchan, vice president of the Nixon Center in
Washington
and a former Clinton administration official who is an expert on Iran.
"On the Israeli side, it is not clear that they have the military
capabilities or intelligence knowledge to significantly set back the
Iranian program. The Iranians learned from Osirak to disperse and copy
everything they have (in their nuclear program). I don't think that
Israel
can do much."
Sammy Salama, a research associate at the Center for
Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in
California,
noted that the military situation is different, too.
"Iraq didn't have any way of striking back," Salama said, alluding
to
Iran's long-range Shahab-3 missiles, which are capable of reaching
Israel.
"I think Iran, in essence, is saying, 'We are not Iraq."'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 AP | | | | Alpha | | | | gchq | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 10:35 am Post subject: NEOCON TIMELINE FOR WAR |
| http://www.ameu.org/summary.asp
Current Issue
Title: Timeline for War
Author: John F. Mahoney
September - October 2004
Volume 37 , Issue 4
Download PDF
Unless otherwise noted, the sources for this timeline come from the following: “A Pretext for War,” (Doubleday) by James Bamford; “Plan of Attack,” (Simon & Schuster) by Bob Woodward; “Rise of the Vulcans,” (Viking) by James Mann; “Against All Enemies,” (Free Press, Simon & Schuster) by Richard Clarke; “The 9/11 Commission Report,” by The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks against the United States; and “The Path to War,” an article that appeared in the May 2004 issue of Vanity Fair.
A Reader’s Guide on pages 8 & 9 offers background information on persons who enter prominently in the timeline; it is based on two articles: “The Men From JINSA and CSP” by Jason Vest in the Sept. 2, 2002 issue of The Nation, and “Serving Two Flags: Neocons, Israel and the Bush Administration” by Stephen Green in the May 2004 issue of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
While the timeline was being constructed, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released its 511-page report on why we went to war against Iraq. The report concludes that the major reasons the Bush administration gave to justify the war were baseless. Most of the blame is placed on the CIA, but, as Senator Jay Rockefeller noted, the report does not explain the environment of intense pressure in which intelligence officials were asked to render judgments on Iraq, when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public. This part of the committee’s investigation is expected later this year, most likely after the November presidential elections.
Our timeline aims to fill the gap left in the Senate Committee’s report. Recognizing that the information was wrong is one thing; acknowledging how and why it was wrong is quite another—and too important to leave for post-November 2 reading.
A.M.E.U.’s list of books and videos is on pages 14-16. Of particular relevance to this timeline issue are James Bamford’s book, “A Pretext for War,” and the video “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land,” produced by the Media Education Foundation. Bamford is the former Washington investigative producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. His book reads like a detective mystery. And, like all good detectives, Bamford follows the facts. He concludes that the Bush administration has co-opted the intelligence community for its own political ends, and that its Middle East policy, from overthrowing Saddam Hussein to unconditionally supporting Israel, is driven by long-held beliefs and goals of an elite group of conservatives inside and outside government.
As for how this can happen and why we Americans fail to see the centrality of the Palestinian cause, “Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land” answers those questions better than any documentary I’ve seen.—John F. Mahoney, Executive Director, September 2004.
Articles
http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=258&aid=434&pg=1
Timeline for War, by John F. Mahoney
Timeline for War
by: John F. Mahoney
September - October 2004
The Link - Volume 37, Issue 4
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Timeline for War
by: John F. Mahoney
September - October 2004
The Link - Volume 37, Issue 4
Timeline for War
The Timeline was written by AMEU executive director John Mahoney, with considerable input and editing from AMEU board members and staff.
March, 1992: The Pentagon. Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary of defense for policy for President Bush, drafts an update of America’s overall military strategy called the “Defense Planning Guidance.” In it he argues that the U.S. might be faced with taking preemptive military action to prevent the use or development of WMD. The official ultimately responsible for the document is Bush’s defense secretary Dick Cheney. The draft is actually written by Wolfowitz’s protégé and top assistant Lewis Libby.
Sept. 1, 1992: New York. Ramzi Yousef, the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, arrives at JFK Airport. Born of a Palestinian mother, his goal is to punish the United States for its support of Israel, knowing that the U.S. government every year sends military and financial aid worth billions of dollars to Israel. Ramzi says that he and his uncle, an engineer who had studied higher mathematics and jet propulsion in the U.S., have been planning to bring down the towers of the World Trade Center, the ultimate symbol of America’s worldwide financial muscle.
Feb. 26, 1993: New York. Ramzi Yousef, with others, sets off explosives at the World Trade Center. Later in the day he flies out of JFK for Karachi, disappointed that both towers were still standing and determined to bring them down at another time.
Feb. 27, 1993: New York. A group calling itself the “Liberation Army” sends a letter to The New York Times saying the World Trade Center bombing was in retaliation for American support for Israel, and warning that if America did not change its Middle East policy, more terrorist missions would be carried out, some by suicide bombers.
April 15, 1993: Kuwait. Kuwaiti police say they have prevented an assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush, his wife, two sons, and daughter-in-law Laura. Most in the CIA promptly point the finger at Saddam Hussein; others, including investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, doubt the Iraqi president had any involvement in the plot.
Jan. 7, 1995: Manila. Ramzi Yousef and a colleague, Abdul Hakim Murad, accidentally set off an explosion in their apartment. Murad is captured and, under torture, tells the Philippine police of a plan to board an American commercial aircraft, hijack it, control the cockpit, and dive the plane into the CIA headquarters. The Chief of Intelligence Command for the Philippine National Police tells the Associated Press that its office shared the information immediately with FBI agents in Manila, along with the message they found on Yousef’s laptop explaining why they were doing it: “If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel … then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States.”
April 18, 1996: Lebanon. Israel attacks a U.N. refugee camp at Qana, killing women and children. Israel says it was a mistake. The U.N. and Amnesty International say it was intentional. Shortly afterwards, Osama bin Laden moves to the mountains of Afghanistan, where he uses the Qana massacre to recruit fighters in a war against the U.S. and Israel.
July 9, 1996: Washington, DC. Douglas Feith, the Washington, DC partner of an Israeli firm soliciting American business for Israel’s right-wing settler movement, joins with other pro-settlement supporters Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Wurmser’s wife, Meryav, to develop a foreign-policy position paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” it calls for Israel to overthrow Saddam Hussein and put a pro-Israel regime in his place. Netanyahu rejects it.
July 25, 1996: Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. A truck bomb rams a high-rise complex housing U.S. airmen. Nineteen are killed. The bombing is blamed on Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors, although the U.S. commission investigating the 9/11 attacks will later conclude that Osama bin Laden may have had an involvement—but not Saddam Hussein.
Aug. 23, 1996: Afghanistan. Bin Laden, with his new mastermind for worldwide operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, issues a call to action: “My Muslim Brothers of the world…Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places [Saudi Arabia] are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy — your enemy and their enemy — the Americans and the Israelis…The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory...They [Americans] are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this [their] government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and in other places.”
Jan. 26, 1998: Washington, DC. Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Armitage, and 14 others send letter to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq and a more aggressive Middle East policy. The letter is sponsored by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), founded by William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard.
July 31, 1998: New York. David Wurmser meets with Israel’s permanent representative to the U.N., Dore Gold, in an effort to get Israel to put pressure on the American Congress to approve a $10 million grant to Ahmed Chalabi ‘s Iraqi National Congress, an exile group based in London with a guerilla army based in northern Iraq, whose purpose is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Aug. 7, 1998: Tanzania and Kenya. Suspected Al Qaeda cells bomb U.S. embassies in both countries, killing 258, including 12 Americans.
Aug. 20, 1998: Afghanistan and Sudan. President Clinton orders missile attack against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan said to produce nerve gas and to be linked to bin Laden. Bin Laden survives and doubts are raised about the pharmaceutical plant, which Sudanese say produced infant formula. Shortly after, bin Laden tells ABC News that, if the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the Ka’aba in Saudi Arabia is a crime, he indeed is a criminal.
Feb.-March, 1999: Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden summons Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to tell him that his proposal to use aircraft as terror weapons against the U.S. has the full support of Al Qaeda.
Sept. 28, 2000: Jerusalem. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, flanked by 1,000 armed police, visits site of the Al Aqsa Mosque. Bin Laden reacts by asking that the planned attacks against the U.S. be moved up.
Oct. 12, 2000: Yemen. The USS Cole is attacked; 17 sailors are killed and 39 wounded. Bin Laden, the suspected mastermind, praises the suicide attackers, then reads a poem he wrote in honor of Palestinian children killed in their struggle against Israel’s occupation of their land.
Jan. 1, 2001: Washington, DC. David Wurmser recommends to President-elect Bush that America and Israel join forces to “strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza,” and he suggests that “crises can be opportunities” to implement this plan.
Jan. 30, 2001: The White House. President Bush holds his first high-level National Security Council meeting. Two topics are on the agenda: Israel and Iraq. He says he plans to “tilt it [U.S. policy] back toward Israel” and—in what turns out to be the prime focus of the meeting—he says he wants to remove Saddam Hussein. Condoleezza Rice explains: “Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.”
Feb. 5, 2001: The White House. Rice chairs a principals’ committee meeting to review Iraq policy. All agree that the sanctions were only hurting the Iraqi people, not Saddam. Powell proposes stricter U.N. sanctions on Saddam’s military programs.
April, 2001: The White House. Cabinet deputies meet to review terrorism policy. Richard Clarke warns that the network of terrorist organizations called Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, presents an immediate and serious threat to the U.S., and that the U.S. had to target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the Predator drone. Wolfowitz replies that Iraq is just as much a terrorist threat. Clarke says he is unaware of any Iraqi-sponsored terrorism directed at the U.S. Deputy CIA director John McLaughlin backs up Clarke. Wolfowitz tells Clarke he gives bin Laden too much credit and that he had to have a state sponsor. Clarke replies that bin Laden has made plain his terrorist aims and, as with Hitler in Mein Kampf, you have to believe these people will actually do what they say. Wolfowitz responds that he resents comparing the Holocaust to “this little terrorist in Afghanistan.” Clarke replies: “I wasn’t comparing the Holocaust to anything. I was saying that like Hitler, bin Laden has told us in advance what he plans to do and we would make a big mistake to ignore it.”
June 21, 2001: Afghanistan. Bin Laden aide Ayman al-Zawahiri announces over the Middle East Broadcasting Company that, “The coming weeks will hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests in the world.”
Aug. 6, 2001: Crawford, Texas. President Bush receives a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” It warns that the FBI has intelligence indicating that terrorists might be preparing for an airline hijacking in the U.S. and might be targeting a building in lower Manhattan. No action is taken.
Sept. 4, 2001: The White House. Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke meets with the President to walk him through a proposed National Security Presidential Directive, whose goal is to eliminate bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders. Clarke had asked for the meeting, calling it “urgent,” back in January, but only now is allowed to see him. He tells Bush that the use of minimum-wage rent-a-cops to screen passengers and carry-on at airports has got to stop. The President agrees.
Sept. 11, 2001: New York, Washington, DC, Pennsylvania. Nineteen Middle Eastern hijackers, 15 from Saudi Arabia, commandeer four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Towers in Manhattan, one into the Pentagon in Washington, and one in a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 are killed. Rumsfeld directs Pentagon lawyer to talk to Wolfowitz about Iraq’s connection to the attacks.
Sept. 12, 2001: Germany. Seven members of Rumsfeld’s brain trust meet at an airport in Frankfurt and board an Air Force refueling plane sent to ferry them back to Washington. Group includes Douglas Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy. On the flight back they sketch out a plan for the defense secretary according to which the U.S. would first topple the Taliban government of Afghanistan, then go after other terror states, including Iraq. Feith appoints David Wurmser to put together a secret intelligence unit in his Pentagon office that will bypass the normal channels and report directly to him; called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, its purpose is to find loose ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in order to counter the CIA, whose analysts had found no credible links between the two. Later in the day, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke attends White House meetings of the inner circle of Bush’s war cabinet and is stunned to learn that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to take advantage of the national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Rumsfeld specifically asks if the attacks did not present an “opportunity” to launch war against Iraq.
Sept. 15, 2001: Camp David. Bush gathers closest advisers. Much discussion is on Afghanistan, but Wolfowitz advocates attacking Iraq, maybe even before Afghanistan. He says there’s a 10 to 50 percent chance Iraq was involved in 9/11. Bush sends note to Wolfowitz saying he doesn't want to hear more on Iraq that day. Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz, and Rice vote against hitting Iraq first; Rumsfeld abstains. Powell, who is appalled at the idea of hitting Iraq, finds Rumsfeld abstention interesting. Richard Perle, who is also present, says Wolfowitz planted the seed.
Sept. 16, 2001: Washington, DC. Richard Perle and other neoconservatives send letter to Bush urging him to focus immediately on a war with Iraq, whether or not a connection with 9/11 can be shown.
Sept. 17, 2001: The White House. Bush signs a Top Secret order that lays out his plan for going to war in Afghanistan and directs the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.
Sept. 19, 2001: The Pentagon. Perle convenes a two-day meeting of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises the Pentagon. He introduces two guest speakers: Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, a longtime friend of Cheney and Wolfowitz, who says U.S. must respond to 9/11 with a show of strength, and must support such democratic reformers in the Middle East as Ahmad Chalabi. The second speaker, in fact, is Ahmad Chalabi, who tells the group that Iraq does possess WMD, although, as yet, there is no evidence linking Iraq to 9/11.
Oct. 7, 2001: Afghanistan. U.S. and U.K. planes bomb Taliban bases; the war against Al Qaeda begins.
Nov. 13, 2001: Afghanistan. The capital, Kabul, falls. Most of the Taliban leaders flee.
Nov. 21, 2001: The White House. At the end of a National Security Council meeting, President Bush secretly directs Rumsfeld to prepare for war on Iraq.
Nov. 27, 2001: Florida. Rumsfeld flies to see General Franks at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa and tells him to update the Top Secret Operation Plan on attacking and invading Iraq.
Dec. 4, 2001: The Pentagon. Franks presents a slightly revised plan on invading Iraq. Estimated force level is reduced from 500,000 to 400,000. Rumsfeld thinks fewer forces will be needed in light of the Afghanistan success. Franks agrees.
Dec. 12, 2002: The Pentagon. Franks returns with updated plan. Rumsfeld tells him he has to look at a plan that he could do “as early as April or May.”
Dec. 20, 2001: New York. The New York Times reporter Judith Miller has front-page interview with Iraqi defector Adnan Ishan Saeed al-Haidere, who says he has recently been working in Baghdad in secret facilities for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Miller secures the interview through Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, which has close contacts with Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith. Miller will later say that it is Chalabi who provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to The New York Times.
Dec. 28, 2002: The White House. Franks tells Bush that, with support from other Muslim countries, Iraq could be invaded with an initial 105,000 U.S. forces, but 230,000 eventually would be needed.
Jan. 2002: The White House. Bush’s top speechwriter, Michael Gerson, gives instructions to David Frum, a Canadian, to write a speech making the best case for war in Iraq.
Jan. 29, 2002: Washington, DC. Bush gives State of the Union address; he calls North Korea, Iran, and Iraq an axis of evil and pledges not to wait while dangers gather.
Feb. 1, 2002: The Pentagon. Franks tells Rumsfeld a unilateral U.S.-only invasion of Iraq could be readied in 45 days with an initial force of 105,000; ultimately, 300,000 would be needed to stabilize Iraq after it fell.
Feb. 7, 2002: White House Situation Room. Rumsfeld introduces notion of shock and awe, i.e., building up such a carrier force and bombing onslaught that it might, by itself, trigger regime change.
Feb. 12, 2002: Washington, DC. Powell tells the Senate Budget Committee there are no plans to go to war with Iran or North Korea, but U.S. is looking into ways of bringing about regime change in Iraq.
Feb. 16, 2002: White House. The National Security Council ratifies Policy Directive on Iraq, committing the U.S. to examining ways of bringing about a CIA-backed coup and providing military support for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.
Feb. 20, 2002: Iraq. CIA survey team secretly enters northern Iraq to prepare for deployment of CIA paramilitary teams.
Feb. 28, 2002: Pentagon. Franks brings Rumsfeld a list of nearly 4,000 possible bombing targets in Iraq. Rumsfeld tells him to prioritize the list.
March 6, 2002: The White House. In preparation of his upcoming visit to the Middle East, Cheney is briefed by Franks, who tells him what the U.S. will need in its invasion of Iraq from other Arab and Muslim countries. When he does go to the Middle East, the vice president is surprised to learn that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is seen by Arab leaders as a greater threat to the region than Saddam Hussein.
March 9, 2002: Washington, DC. CIA tells the White House reports that Niger was supplying Iraq with uranium were investigated by Ambassador Joseph Wilson and were found not to be credible.
March 14, 2002: The White House. The Joint Chiefs of Staff report that an invasion of Iraq “would place severe strains on personnel and cause deep shortages of certain critical weapons.”
April 20, 2002: Camp David. Bush tell Franks he wants the invasion of Iraq done “right and quickly.”
April 24, 2002: Doha, Qatar. Franks tells his major commanders to do whatever it takes to prepare for an invasion, no matter the costs.
May 11, 2002: Camp David. Franks presents a five-front war plan to Bush.
June 19, 2002: The White House. Franks tells Bush he could do the invasion within 30 days with a little over 100,000 ground assault troops.
Late Aug. 2002: The Pentagon. Office of Special Plans is set up at the Pentagon to plan for the war and its aftermath. Picked to head the OSP is longtime protégé of Richard Perle, Abram Shulsky. As part of its mission, the OSP forges close ties to a parallel intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel, whose job is to provide key Bush administration people with cooked intelligence on Saddam’s Iraq. One Pentagon official, Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, later relates how she had escorted six or seven Israeli generals to Feith’s OSP office. The generals surged ahead of her, waved aside the required sign-in book, and entered the OSP office; seeing Feith’s office door closed, the generals demanded to know from his secretary who Feith was talking to.
Sept. 7, 2002: The White House. Bush tells reporters that an International Atomic Energy Agency report estimates that the Iraqis are six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. The new report, however, turns out to be an old IAEA document from 1996 that described a weapons program that the inspectors had long ago destroyed.
Sept. 12, 2002: New York. Bush addresses U.N. General Assembly, saying the U.S. will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions to go to war with Iraq.
Sept. 16, 2002: New York. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan says he has received a letter from Iraqi authorities allowing inspectors access “without conditions.” Bush administration is livid because it did not say “unfettered access,” meaning “anytime, anyplace.”
Sept. 19, 2002: Washington, DC. Rumsfeld, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, says current U.N. inspection team is weak. At the White House, Bush says if U.N. Security Council won’t deal with Iraq, “the U.S. and some of our friends will.” Bush also meets with 11 House members, telling them the biggest threat is that Saddam, with his WMD, “can blow up Israel and that would trigger an international incident.”
Oct. 1, 2002: Langley, Virginia. CIA prepares secret National Intelligence Estimate on the case for war with Iraq. NIE claims Saddam has chemical and biological weapons, including mobile labs, and that it is building nuclear weapons. Bush wants condensed version for the public in the form of a White Paper. The White Paper, however, distorts the facts to make the strongest possible case for war. (See the Vanity Fair article for specific examples of distortions.)
Nov. 8, 2002: New York. U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 1441, which gives Iraq a “final opportunity” to come clean on its WMD, adding that the council would meet again, following the inspectors’ report, to “consider the situation.” The French, who oppose war with Iraq, say off the record that they understand the resolution is enough to give America and Britain legal cover for going it alone, if they felt Iraq hadn’t complied to their satisfaction.
Dec. 7, 2002: Baghdad. Iraqi government delivers a 12,000-page document in Arabic to UNMOVIC. It is intended to account for the state of its weapons programs. The U.S. takes possession of it, has it translated, submits it to the Security Council with large portions deleted, then dismisses it as a “material breach” of Resolution 1441.
Jan. 13, 2003: The White House. The French call for a meeting that is held in Rice’s office. Attending are Chirac’s top adviser, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, and French Ambassador to the U.S., Jean-David Levitte. Both explain their country’s reasons for opposing the war, then Levitte says that if the U.S. was determined to go to war, it should not seek a second U.N. resolution, that 1441 arguably gave the White House enough cover, and that France would keep quiet if the U.S. went ahead. White House dismisses the offer because it has promised Tony Blair it would seek a second resolution. The French are angry. On the same day, Bush tells Powell in the Oval office, “I’m really going to do this.” Powell asks if he understands the Pottery Barn principle: if he breaks Iraq, he’ll own it. Bush says he understands.
Jan. 20, 2003: New York. French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin announces that France will not support military intervention in Iraq. The White House is irate.
Jan. 21, 2003: The White House. Franks delivers final war plan to Bush. He estimates fewer than 1,000 U.S. killed. No public pictures of returning coffins and no body count of Iraqis killed will be permitted, as both practices created bad PR during the Vietnam war.
Jan. 25, 2003: White House. Lewis Libby makes presentation on Saddam’s WMD and ties him to bin Laden. Much of the material comes from Feith’s Office of Special Plans. Richard Armitage, the second in authority at the State Department, sees it as drawing the worst conclusions from fragmentary threads; Wolfowitz finds it convincing. Bush aides Karen Hughes and Karl Rove think Powell should make the U.N. presentation. Powell agrees to do it.
Jan. 27, 2003: New York. Hans Blix delivers his first inspections report to U.N. He acknowledges that no WMD have been found but notes that Iraq has failed to account for undetermined quantities of the nerve agent VX and anthrax, and for 6,500 chemical bombs.
Jan. 28, 2003: Washington, DC. Bush gives State of the Union address in which he claims: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Jan. 29, 2003: The State Department. Powell gives his chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, a 48-page dossier that the White House wants Powell to use in his U.N. speech making the case for war with Iraq. The dossier is prepared in Cheney’s office by a team led by Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, and his deputy assistant for national security affairs, John Hannah.
Jan. 30, 2003: Langley, Virginia. Wilkerson, with several staff members and CIA analysts, sets up shop at CIA headquarters to prepare Powell’s speech. Meanwhile the White House supplies 45 more pages on Iraq’s links to terrorism and human rights violations.
Jan. 31, 2003: Langley, Virginia. Wilkerson throws out the White House dossier, suspecting much of it originated with the Iraqi National Congress and its chief, Ahmad Chalabi, whose information in the past often proved suspect or fabricated. Powell is convinced that much of the material had been funneled to Cheney by the separate OSP unit set up by Rumsfeld. “We were so appalled at what had arrived from the White house,” says one staff member.
Feb. 5, 2003: New York. At 2 a.m., on the day of his U.N. speech, Powell receives a call from the CIA’s George Tenet, who says he wants another look at the speech. Tenet is afraid Powell has cut too much about Saddam’s supposed links to terrorism, especially the 9/11 attack. For days the White House and Cheney have pressed Powell to include a widely discredited Czech intelligence report that Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. Powell had thrown out the Prague material as suspect and unverified. But Powell does keep much of what the White House wants, including mobile biological weapons labs, ties to Al Qaeda, and anthrax stockpiles. One of the sources for the mobile labs is an Iraqi major known to the CIA to be a liar. That morning, at the U.N., Powell insists that Tenet sit behind him as a signal that he is relying on the CIA to make the case for war.
Feb. 8, 2003: The White House. President Bush, in his weekly radio address, says: “Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990’s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document-forgery experts to work with Al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990’s for help in acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad.”
Feb. 14, 2003: New York. Hans Blix goes before the U.N. Security Council. He contradicts Powell, saying the trucks Powell had described as being used for chemical decontamination could just as easily have been used for routine activity, and he contradicts Powell’s statement that the Iraqis knew in advance when the inspectors would be arriving. And he adds that Iraq is finally taking steps toward real cooperation with the inspectors, allowing them to enter Iraqi presidential palaces, among other previously prohibited sites. Disarmament through inspections is still possible, he concludes.
Feb. 15, 2003: Worldwide. Tens of millions participate in an unprecedented, antiwar demonstration. The biggest crowds are in the countries that support the war: Britain, Italy, and Spain.
Feb. 24, 2003: New York. Claiming Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded it in Resolution 1441, the U.S., Britain, and Spain propose the second resolution Tony Blair has been seeking.
Feb. 27, 2003: The White House. Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel visits Bush and tells him Iraq is a terrorist state that should be invaded as a matter of morality, otherwise Saddam will unleash a weapon of mass destruction on Israel. Bush later remarks, “If Elie Wiesel feels that way, I am not alone.”
March 1, 2003: Turkey. The Turkish government rejects U.S. request to move troops through its country.
March 3, 2003: The White House. Pope John Paul II’s envoy, Cardinal Pio Laghi, visits Bush and tells him war with Iraq would be unjust and illegal because it would cause so many civilian casualties, create a wider gap between the Christian and Muslim world, and overall would not make things better. Bush replies it would absolutely make things better.
March 7, 2003: France. The French announce they will veto a second resolution to authorize the automatic use of force. The U.S. begins lobbying the six undecided members of the Security Council: Pakistan, Chile, Mexico, Cameroon, Guinea, and Angola, having first wiretapped their offices. Chile and Mexico say they will not support a second resolution.
March 10, 2003: France. French President Chirac goes on TV and announces, “My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote ‘no’.” U.S. and Britain blame France for the diplomatic breakdown, and use it as the reason for not seeking the second resolution.
March 14, 2003: The White House. As a concession to Blair, Bush announces agreement on a road map for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
March 16, 2003: The Azores. Bush, Blair and Spanish prime minister Aznar meet. Bush says they need to start the war soon because antiwar sentiment will only get worse if they delay. He says he is going to give Saddam a 48-hour ultimatum to leave Iraq.
March 17, 2003: The White House. Bush reneges on his commitment to seek U.N. approval, claiming 1441 provides ample authorization. In a TV announcement he gives Saddam the 48-hour ultimatum. Prior to the announcement he calls Australian prime minister Howard and Israeli prime minister Sharon to tell them of his decision. Meanwhile, Cheney tells congressional leaders of the decision, noting that Israel will not be part of the coalition, “but we are working closely with them on their reaction.”
March 18: 2003: London. Blair wins a Commons vote for war, barely carrying his own party.
March 19, 2003: The White House. Bush gives Franks order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. Around 4 p.m., CIA information is received that Saddam and his two sons are or will be in a bunker in Baghdad. Cheney advises Bush to strike at the target, effectively beginning the war. Bush agrees. At 7:30 p.m., Rice phones Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling him the war had begun; he says he knows. Rice then summons Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar to come to the White House. Around 8:30 p.m. she tells him that, within a half-hour, all hell will break loose. At 10:10 p.m., Bush informs the nation the war has started.
April 7, 2003: Washington. Rumsfeld appoints Gen. Jay Garner to direct Pentagon’s new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq. Garner, a JINSA advisor, says the first person he will invite to work with him is former Israeli defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.
May 2, 2003: The USS Lincoln. President Bush tells nation, “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
May 6, 2003: Washington. L. Paul Bremer III is appointed administrator of Iraq, replacing Jay Garner.
June 5, 2003: Washington, DC. The Washington Post reports that VP Cheney and his aide Lewis Libby paid multiple visits to the CIA in the months leading up to the Iraq war. Later, former CIA Counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro will tell a congressional hearing that prior to the war, the White House exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to come up with evidence linking Iraq to bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
June 8, 2003: Washington, DC. David Kay, former chief weapons inspector for the U.N., is asked to take over the search for WMD in Iraq.
July 6, 2003: New York. Former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson IV writes column in The New York Times saying he was sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger by the CIA and that, well before the president’s State of the Union Address, he reported his finding that no uranium had been shipped to Iraq.
August 27, 2003: Washington. Newly available documents reveal that Halliburton, the company VP Cheney formerly headed, wins contracts for more than $1.7 billion out of Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to receive hundreds of millions more under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Bechtel Group, George Shultz’s company, wins contracts for one billion dollars.
Sept. 17, 2003: The White House. President Bush tells a reporter, “No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11.”
Oct. 2, 2003: Washington, DC. Kay delivers interim report to Congress saying, “We have not yet found stocks of weapons.”
Dec. 13, 2003: Iraq. Saddam Hussein is captured.
Jan. 23, 2004: David Kay resigns.
Jan. 28, 2004: Washington. Regarding the existence of WMD in Iraq, Kay tells Senate Armed Services Committee, “We were almost all wrong.” His testimony forces White House to name a presidential commission to investigate the prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Feb. 5, 2004: Washington, DC. Tenet admits in a speech at Georgetown University that as far back as May 2002 the Defense Information Agency had issued a “fabrication notification” to steer clear of the Iraqi major who had attested to the mobile biological labs mentioned in Powell’s U.N. speech. Somehow the CIA never saw it.
Feb. 24, 2004: Washington, DC. CIA director Tenet tells the Senate Select Committee that, despite our invasion of Afghanistan and occupation of Iraq, the worldwide threat from bin Laden and Al Qaeda has grown, not diminished.
March 11, 2004: Madrid. Train bombs kill 200 people. Search leads to a widening web of organizations that may have few ties to Al Qaeda but share its goals.
March 14, 2004: Madrid. Conservative prime minister José Aznar is defeated by Socialist challenger José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, who ran on a pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq unless they were placed under U.N. sanction. The new prime minister calls the Iraq war an error, saying: “It divided more than it united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation has been poorly managed.”
April 18, 2004: Madrid. Spain withdraws all its troops from the Coalition of the Willing.
April 19, 2004: Nicaragua. President Maduro says Nicaragua will withdraw its forces from Iraq.
April 28, 2004: CBS’s Sixty Minutes II shows U.S. troops mistreating Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
April 29, 2004: Santo Domingo. The Dominican Republic withdraws its troops from Iraq, citing security concerns. Wolfowitz tells a congressional hearing that Iraq is still a combat zone, “and until it becomes peacekeeping, a lot of countries are probably going to stay on the sidelines.”
May 20, 2004: Baghdad. Iraqi police and U.S. military raid home of Iraqi National Council finance minister Ahmad Chalabi as part of an investigation into suspected fraud. CIA also charges him with informing Iran that the U.S. had cracked its secret codes and was eavesdropping on its intelligence messages. The Pentagon stops monthly payments of $340,000 to Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.
May 26, 2004: New York. The New York Times acknowledges that its reporters, among them Judith Miller, used questionable sources in affirming the existence of WMD in Iraq, and that Ahmad Chalabi, the INC leader, was feeding bad information to journalists and the White House, information the White House eagerly received.
May 29, 2004: Baghdad. Iyad Alawi, a longtime CIA operative, is chosen interim prime minister of Iraq.
June 4, 2004: Langley, Va. CIA Director George Tenet resigns.
June 16, 2004: Washington, DC. The 9/11 Commission investigating the September 11 attacks reports that there did not appear to be a collaborative relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
June 22, 2004: Washington. Wolfowitz tells a House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon had underestimated Iraq’s postwar insurgency and that the U.S. may have to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq for years to come.
July 5, 2004: Former U.S. Army General Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison when Iraqi detainees were abused and humiliated, tells BBC radio that she knew of at least one Israeli involved in the prisoner interrogation.
July 9, 2004: Washington. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concludes in its report that the most pivotal assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were unfounded and unreasonable. Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the committee, concludes: “We in Congress would not have authorized that war — we would NOT have authorized that war—with 75 votes if we knew what we know now.” The second part of the report on whether the White House and Pentagon tried to influence intelligence agencies is postponed until after the November election.
July 12, 2004: The Philippines. President Arroyo announces that her country will withdraw from the Coalition of the Willing in order to save the life of a Filipino hostage held by Iraqi insurgents.
Aug. 1, 2004: Number of U.S. killed in the Iraq war reaches 910. The media is barred from showing their returning coffins. Number of Iraqi civilians killed is not available from official U.S. sources; independent sources estimate the number to be between 11,305 and 13,315. (For updates on Iraqis killed and wounded, see: www.iraqbodycount.org.)
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