WashPost: WH claims CIA withheld Iraq WMD intel - or did Cheney do it?

[leveymg]

A report in today's Washington Post appears to provide additional context to the motive behind the Plame outing.

Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed today that highly secret CIA briefing in late 2002 by a ranking official in Saddam Hussein's government was withheld from distribution. That information contradicted the allegations being made at the time by the Bush Administration that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons and held large stocks of chemical and biological arms.

As Pincus' sources at CIA makes clear, a section of that report should have been distributed within CIA to Valerie Plame's unit that was probing Iraq WMDs, and the other to the CIA Iraq counter-terrorism unit. From information previously released, the counterterrorism unit seems likely to have included the former Chief of Station in Islamabad, Richard Grenier. As we learned six months ago, Scooter Libby talked to Grenier about Plame's work at CIA before he outed her.

Pincus reports at the concluding section of today's article (buried on page A14, under a title that focuses on false allegations made by the Bush Administration of alleged Iraq-al Qaeda ties): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401545.html

Former senior CIA officials said it was unclear what happened to the Hussein-bin Laden information, although two former aides to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet said they could not remember if they received the original information. "Nothing was withheld from the White House," one former aide said, although there was "a lot of debate inside the agency about the Saddam-al-Qaeda relationship" because it was the focus of repeated questions from administration officials, including Vice President Cheney and his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The high-level Iraqi official, who was not identified in the Senate report, was Naji Sabri, then foreign minister. A senior CIA officer, after months of trying, was able to question him through a trusted agency intermediary when Sabri was in New York City around Sept. 19, 2002.

According to former intelligence officials, the CIA case officer filed two separate reports describing his questioning of Sabri. One, involving the Iraq weapons program, would go to analysts interested in that subject, the officer believed; the second, about Hussein and bin Laden, would go to the CIA counterterrorism center. The officer, however, passed his material on to senior agency officials in New York and was not aware of how it was eventually distributed.

The implication here is that Plame was embroiled in the controversy within CIA over whether this report containing Sabri's information that Iraq had no WMD program should be included in an official finding to be disseminated throughout the U.S. intelligence community. The obvious party who blocked that dissemination was Libby, acting on behalf of the Vice President.

I wrote about that March 20, when news came out about Libby's contact with Grenier: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/20/14939/6889

Mr. Libby has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice related to a coordinated White House operation that revealed Ms. Plame's identity to reporters. The 39-page filing submitted by defense lawyers indicates that Robert Grenier, a recently-retired former head of CIA counter-terrorism, may have been the source for some details of Libby's knowledge about Plame, an undercover CIA counterproliferation expert. Appointed head of counterrorism in 2004, Grenier was Chief of Station in Islamabad, and had been working in Pakistan for many years, a position that would make him familiar with A.Q. Khan's activities. According to a February Washington Post report printed at the time of Grenier's departure from the Agency in February, Grenier had been recalled from Pakistan to headquarters and been tasked to head the Iraq Issues Group in anticipation of the U.S. invasion. According to The Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

The Post stated: "Robert Grenier, who spent most of his career undercover overseas, took charge of the Counterterrorism Center about a year ago after a series of senior jobs at the center of the Bush administration's national security agenda.

"When al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan. Among the agency's most experienced officers in southwest Asia, Grenier helped plan the covert campaign that preceded the U.S. military ouster of al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from Afghanistan.

"By the summer of 2002, with President Bush heading toward war in Iraq, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet recalled Grenier to headquarters and promoted him to chief of a newly created Iraq Issues Group. His staff ballooned as the administration planned and launched the invasion in March 2003."(end quote)

(I wrote)It is unknown whether Grenier became acquainted with Plame during his stint at CIA headquarters, or whether they had previously worked on matters in South Asia. But, both would likely have extensive knowledge of matters related to Pakistan's commerce in nuclear technology with Iran. From the mid-1980s until 1997, the A.Q. Khan network was Iran's primary supplier of nuclear know-how.

The A.Q. Khan network was of interest to both the CIA counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation divisions

The court filing revealing Mr. Grenier's knowledge of Ms. Plame sheds new light on how the CIA's nuclear counterproliferation activities were connected to counter-terrorism operations in South Asia, and some new clues to Plame's role at CIA.

It has been reported that Plame's primary assignment at the time of her outing in the summer of 2003 was Iran's nuclear program. If Grenier's knowledge of Plame's role was gained during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, it might indicate that Grenier simply worked down the hall from Plame. On the other hand, the two may have had a closer acquaintance. If Grenier had been working with Plame earlier, this would have much broader implications for Plame's role within the Agency and might suggest possible additional motives for the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) to ruin her career.

***

There's been a lot of buzz that the recent flurry of article that have appeared about the source of the Plame leak might be leading to a new development in the Fitzgerald investigation. This article by Pincus may be pointing in that direction.

__________________________________
2006. Mark G. levey

[leftchick]

1. Outstanding!

:thumbsup:

[H2O Man]

2. Well done!

The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to be put together in a public way.

[leveymg]

4. They're giving us the pieces, at least.

It's still left to us to piece them together as best we can.

Any suggestions? - note that I did a light editing and cleanup, and it still needs some more.

[H2O Man]

7. I think there are

about a half-dozen references to Sabri in the Corn-Isikoff book. Perhaps of more value is the extensive documentation in "Hubris' that shows how Mr. Chalabi & friends played the OVP/OSP in order to get the USA to invade Iraq. The Agency was finding, over and over, that there were two types of WMD evidence being pushed by the OVP/OSP: the less important being the things similar to the watering hole for cattle on the side of a mountain ("but it could be a cave to hide WMD, couldn't it?"); the more important was the evidence that was faked by Chalabi and funneled to Feith and friends. When we consider the repression of real evidence, and the pimping of lies -- combining Hubris and the article you mention in the OP -- the picture becomes clearer.

[leveymg]

10. "Curveball" was one of Chalabi's boys, yes?

Would you be kind enough to round up a fifth to kick this so others can have a look?

Thanks - Mark

[bleever]

20. Yes indeed:

A discredited INC defector to Germany who was code-named ‘Curveball’ was the chief source of information on Iraq’s supposed fleet of mobile germ weapons factories. Curveball was the brother of a top lieutenant to Ahmed Chalabi, the group’s leader and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. (LA Times, 5/23/04; Knight-Ridder, 4/3/04)

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/08/chalabis-sordid-history/

[leveymg]

27. OSP, Likud, INC, neatly tied together

Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation, July 7, 2003: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030707/dreyfuss

According to current and former US intelligence analysts and government officials, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans funneled information, unchallenged, from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who in turn passed it on to the White House, suggesting that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders. The Office of Special Plans is led by Abram Shulsky, a hawkish neoconservative ideologue who got his start in politics working alongside Elliott Abrams in Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson's office in the 1970s. It was set up in fall 2001 as a two-man shop, but it burgeoned into an eighteen-member nerve center of the Pentagon's effort to distort intelligence about Iraq's WMDs and terrorist connections. A great deal of the bad information produced by Shulsky's office, which found its way into speeches by Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, came from Chalabi's INC. Since the INC itself was sustained by its neocon allies in Washington, including the shadow "Central Command" at the American Enterprise Institute, it stands as perhaps the ultimate example of circular reasoning.

"The same unit that fed Chalabi's intelligence on WMD to Rumsfeld was also feeding him Chalabi's stuff on the prospects for postwar Iraq," said a leading US government expert on the Middle East. Says a former US ambassador with strong links to the CIA: "There was certainly information coming from the Iraqi exile community, including Chalabi--who was detested by the CIA and by the State Department--saying, 'They will welcome you with open arms.'" Rumsfeld's willingness to accept that view led him to contradict the Chief of Staff of the US Army, who predicted that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to control Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, a view that seems prescient today.

According to the former official, also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit, which paralleled Shulsky's--and which has not previously been reported--prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans. It was created in Sharon's office, not inside Israel's Mossad intelligence service, because the Mossad--which prides itself on extreme professionalism--had views closer to the CIA's, not the Pentagon's, on Iraq. This secretive unit, and not the Mossad, may well have been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa, according to the former official.

The catastrophic result of the belief that it would be easy to pacify postwar Iraq and to create a quisling government in Baghdad, a view that was codified as dogma by the White House, is unfolding daily in Iraq.

[H2O Man]

28. There are a group

who may not have been looking to easily pacify Iraq in the post-invasion phase. While it is unlikely they anticipated the difficulties that have taken place, there is good reason to think they looked forward to an expanding conflict in that region.

One person who we should look closely at is Mr. Wurmser.

[leveymg]

29. and Mr. Perle. See, "A Clean Break"

One should look at the objectives set out in Perle and Wurmser's 1997 "A Clean Break: A Strategy for Securing the Realm", written by American neocons for Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party. I don't think there's a snowball's chance in Hell that it's going to be accomplished, now.

A conquest of Iran was the ultimate goal. The exact sequencing was to take down Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and finally Iran. http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm Instead, it Looks like they got bogged down at step one-and-a-half of that four-step agenda. While Saddam was removed and Hezbollah bombed, the cost was a loss of American AND Israeli military credibility and, with that loss, the power of deterrence. The power to deter, as any professional military officer or diplomat will tell you, is the most important element of maintaining stability essential to dominance by a leading power. Destabilization favors contenders, not the dominant states.

The plan was packaged for Netanyahu as a model for transforming Israel, itself, into a Right-wing regional empire. Israeli is far more vulnerable now than it was before it demonstrated its very real limitations in Lebanon. Same for the U.S. in Iraq.

Mission failed. Now comes the whirlwind.


Mark

[Coexist]

3. Great work. n/t

[acmavm]

5. All very interesting but I'd really like to know how anyone

ever expects to get the real truth about what happened, something you can take into a court of law or to be used in an impeachment hearing.

And they did intentionally ruin her career. If she was working on WMD intelligence, they needed her ass out of the way in order to be able to do the Iraq (and soon Iran) attack(s).

[Parisle]

6. This would be worth a try,.....

---- Cancel Libby's bail. Put him in jail until he talks,..... hell, we do it to reporters, don't we? And this would seem to be a little more important, eh? Make a deal: Libby rats out Cheney, and he's free to go back to writing sleazy novels.

[Hamlette]

8. waterboard him...n/t

[seemslikeadream]

9. Dick Cheney - American Judas

Dick Cheney exposed Valerie Plame to cover up his association with A.Q. Khan's Nuclear Walmart. Read about it here: http://s93118771.onlinehome.us/DU/AMERICANJUDAS.pdf

[leveymg]

11. Love that banner, SLAD

We all seem to be moving in the same direction with this.

If you haven't already, could you REC this? We seem to be stuck at 4 recs.

[countryjake]

18. kicked & recommended!

[Supersedeas]

24. yet, there is a huge sector of the Corp Media that fail to report it

[Missy Vixen]

12. I'm proud to give the fifth recommend

Here's to the truth coming out -- ALL the truth.

Julie
still president for life of the PFEB

[leveymg]

13. Thanks Julie

Do you and CatGirl25 rotate the Chair of the PFEB?

I'm still a Fitz fan, too.

[Missy Vixen]

19. We're still here

>Do you and CatGirl25 rotate the Chair of the PFEB?<

He's still our favorite guy...there's even a fan club!

http://groups.msn.com/PatrickJ-FitzgeraldFanClub

Julie
president for life of the PFEB

[Straight Shooter]

14. This makes my head reel.

I've been following this through posts on DU, most notably those of H20 Man, and I still have trouble trying to unravel this network of deception promulgated by the White House.

One can only imagine how difficult it's going to be to convince the uninformed of the implications of this. So many people are convinced somehow that elected officials actually have their best interests at heart, and cannot believe that people like bush, cheney, rumsfeld, are only interested in accumulating power and wealth.

[burythehatchet]

15. I hope once and for all people will discontinue

the "she was outed to discredit Joe Wilson" bull.

[leftchick]

16. kick

:kick:

[countryjake]

17. When is the White House Iraq Group going to be fully exposed?

They skewed the declassified info on "the sixteen words" that was presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in making a case for invading Iraq. When that original 92 pg NIE was condensed and presented to that committee (by Tenet), it didn't include the CIA's overall conclusion that the threat of WMD use by Saddam was NOT imminent; instead, it reflected the tone of the WHIG, who were thumping those drums of War harder than hell all during the Fall of 2002.

With the purge of the CIA that has since occurred, shouldn't there be plenty of unemployed agents who knew how our Senate & country was being manipulated by these scoundrels, or are they still so loyal to "the empire" that they would never come forward? I see that as the main reason for the exposure of Ms. Plame, to shut the mouths of anyone else with a notion to contradict that White House Iraq Group.

[lala_rawraw]

21. mark, this is your best thus far

[Jack Rabbit]

22. I brought up the same point last night in LBN

Please click here.

I linked back to this article originally run in the Washington Post some months after the fact.

The proposition that the Big Dick and Scooter knew of this and made sure the information didn't get to the White House is a good hypothesis, to say the least. They were looking first only for facts that would support a fraudulent case for war and second for deniability. There were setting up the CIA to be the fall guy for anything in their case for way that didn't pan out.

To explain this hypothesis, it holds that they didn't know that what they were saying was false, but neither did they know that what they characterized as uncontroverted facts was true. Where I come from, that's still lying. Of course, if they had found WMDs in Iraq, no one would have noticed that they didn't really know that they were there. Even if the infamous sixteen words turned out to be false, as they did, they could have written it off to human error as long as it appeared that for the most part they knew what they were talking about when they were beating the war drums against Saddam in late 2002 and early 2003.

The problem they had is that nothing panned out. Getting everything wrong like they did is probably more remarkable than getting everything right.

Everybody agrees that Bush is an idiot, but this probably shows that the neoconservative policy makers aren't much brighter. A few hard lessons can be learned here, which can easily be stated in nonpartisan terms (listen up, lurking Freepers):

• Don't assume facts. If you want to state something is a fact, verify it first. Don't say "There's a rat in my neighbor's house" unless you've actually seen the rat or fresh evidence of its existence. You may really expect to find a rat in your neighbor's house because there were rats there last year and the year before, but that was last year and the year before, not now. It's not concrete evidence of the rat's presence.


• Don't ignore facts that contradict your hypothesis; if you do, don't be surprised if you are embarrassed in the end. Well, there may have been rats in your neighbor's house last year and the the before, and maybe that entitles you to suspect there is one there now, but it doesn't prove it. So you're on pretty shaky ground in stating that there a rat in your neighbor's house. However, you're on even shakier ground if he's called the exterminator since you last saw rats around your neighbor's place. And while you didn't actually see the exterminator at your neighbor's house, you know he was there because he's your brother-in-law and he told you. He also told you that the place really was rat infested, but not any more. Given this information, you really aren't entitled to state categorically, "There's a rat in my neighbor's house."


• Don't make up lame excuses when the facts aren't what you assumed them to be. Well, after what your brother-in-law told you, you still insist that there are rats in your neighbor's house, so you call the city health department. And you tell the nice people at the city health department that you know he has a rat because he had them last year and the year before and that you've never seen the exterminator come to his place. Technically, all of this is true, you just don't tell them that your brother-in-law, the exterminator, told you he went there. So the city health department sends an inspector to your neighbor's house and finds no rats. Now there's egg on your face. Do you admit you made a mistake? That's what you should do. However, instead you throw a fit and say that he caged the rats and sent them to his mother's house just to make you look silly. After you've said that, one thing is certain: you don't need any help from your neighbor to look silly.


• Don't be surprised after all this if it comes back to bite you in the ass. While you're saying these things and while everybody is laughing at you, along comes your brother-in-law. He asks what all the commotion is about and you tell him. Being the talkative type, he tells everybody that he doesn't understand why you brought the health department down on your neighbor because he told you that he exterminated the rats there months ago. Not only do you hear this, but the health department inspector hears this, your neighbor hears this, and your neighbor's brother-in-law, who just happens to be a trial lawyer, hears this. And he pulls out a note pad and starts writing things down. He takes your neighbor to the side and they have a little discussion in sotto voce. You can't hear it all, but you think you hear the terms "slander" and "lawsuit". About three weeks later, your neighbor's brother-in-law comes around and hands you an thick manila envelope full of papers. I'll leave the rest of the story to your imagination.

So, we ought to have our congresscritters investigate whether the Big Dick and Scooter twisted arms in Langley to keep information like Osama and Saddam had no ties to each other out of the record. Like I say, it makes a reasonable hypothesis. But, that entitles us to demand Congress investigate and bring impeachment articles against the Big Dick and possibly turn any adverse findings over the Justice Department for possible criminal charges against him and Scooter. That way the facts will be on record. Like they should be.

[countryjake]

23. kick

[texpatriot2004]

25. Thanks Leveymg nm

[bleever]

26. Kicking

for this great piece of work.

Thanks, Mark.