A Broken Link (in the Chain of Command)

[H2O Man]

There have been a few very interesting threads on DU:GD regarding George Tenet’s soon-to-be-published book. I have a few things that I think might be of interest to the larger discussion. I think it might be worth our while to review a few paragraphs from one of the best investigative journalists of our era, Seymour Hersch. The following comes from Chapter V (Who Lied to Whom?) of his book "Chain of Command." (Perennial; 2004) Note: If you are buying this book, find the 2005 edition, with an updated Afterword by the author.

Section 2 of this chapter is found on pages 207-224 (Into the Intelligence Stovepipe). It has to do with the Office of Special Plans. This secretive cell of neoconservatives was organized to find "evidence" to support what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz were claiming: that Saddam Hussein had close ties to al Qaeda, and that Iraq had reserves of chemical, biological, and perhaps nuclear WMD, which Saddam might share with terrorists.

It’s important to keep in mind that Rumsfeld had a lot of issues with parts of the intelligence community. Dick Cheney shared Rumsfeld’s contempt for the CIA analysts’ work. Both Rumsfeld and Cheney had done extensive preparation for a "continuity of operations" form of government to take control of this country in case of a national emergency while in previous republican administrations. This "shadow government" was, as Senator Robert Byrd reports on pages 78-79 of his book "Losing America," installed by Cheney a few hours after the 9/11 attacks. And Hersch notes that the OSP took over a significant role in the intelligence community in the post 9/11 weeks. Let’s look closer:

"They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal – a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts who were based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. In the debate leading up to the Iraq war, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also information provided by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. By the fall of 2002, the operation rivalled both the CIA and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, as President Bush’s main source of intelligence ….

"The director of the Special Plans operation was Abram Shulsky, a scholarly expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo Strauss … and, (who) during the Reagan Administration, served in the Pentagon under Richard Perle, …. After which he joined the Rand Corporation. The Office of Special Plans was overseen by Undersecretary of Defense William Luti …. As the Administrationmoved toward war and policy-making power shifted toward the civilians in the Pentagon, Luti took on increasingly important responsibilities. W Patrick Lang, the former chief of Middle East intelligence at the DIA, said that the Pentagon had ‘banded together to dominate the government’s foreign policy, and they’ve pulled it off. They’re running Chalabi. The DIA has been intimidated and beaten to a pulp. And there’s no guts at all in the CIA’. ….

"A Pentagon adviser who had worked with Special Plans similarly told me, in an interview that spring, that in his view Shulsky and Luti had simply ‘won the policy debate’. He said, ‘they beat ‘em – they cleaned up against State and the CIA. There’s no mystery why they won – because they were more effective in making their argument. Luti is smarter than the opposition. Wolfowitz is smarter. They out-argued them. It was a fair fight. They persuaded the President of the need to make a new security policy. Those who lose are so good at trying to undercut those who won’. He added, ‘I’d love to be the historian who writes the story of how this small group of eight or nine people made the case and won’." (207-210)

It is also worth noting that this group of people purposefully lied about the intelligence. By no coincidence, one of the best historians of our Constitutional democracy – Senator Robert Byrd – notes on pages 249-251 of when on September 19, 2002, at an Armed Services Committee, when he confronted Rumsfeld on his lies. Senator Byrd brought to his attention information from a Newsweek story that documented Rumsfeld’s previous relationship with Saddam, and his knowledge of what WMD the US had provided the leader the Reaganites promoted as "another Anwar Sadat, capable of turning Iraq into a modern secular state."

For several years on the Democratic Underground, a group of us have shown how this "shadow government" – run by Cheney and Rumsfeld – had coordinated three situations which have become the three-leaf clover of scandals: the Plame scandal; the Niger forgeries; and the neoconservative/AIPAC espionage scandal.

This summer, there are Congressional investigations with the potential to expose the corrupt, illegal, anti-American behavior that these criminals engaged in. I’m no fan of George Tenet – I think he betrayed his agency and indeed this country when he willingly "fell on his sword" in the past. But if his new book helps to document what went terribly wrong in America during the first term of this unelected "president," (are you wondering if I mean Bush? Or Cheney?), then I welcome it being published.

[calimary]

1. Good post! Good reminder of why we should support Dennis Kucinich,

and his HR333, and call our reps to demand that they do likewise.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x745207

[H2O Man]

2. Very important.

People should be making phone calls and sending e-mails and snail-mail in the morning.

[Mandate My Ass]

3. I heard Greg Thielman speak in 2002

His story about what was going on at State made my hair stand on end. Bolton wanted raw intelligence without vetting or comments by long-time professional analysts. When Thielman refused to supply it, he was simply shut out of discussions - period. Thielman said he is not a Democrat although he had served under them. He said this was simply unprecedented.

[H2O Man]

6. Right.

Hersch quotes him on pages 217-218, where Thielman explains how weak the OSP "intelligence" reports were. The people being marginalized by the OSP would "pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided. There was considerableskepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi's sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President."

On page 40 of Isikoff & Corn's "Hubris," we find this: "In late 2001, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) conducted an internal study of the Iraqi nuclear issue and the tubes. The INR canvassed the nuclear labs and interviewed several nuclear scientists. 'We were talking to all these experts, and they were telling us, "No, no, no, this is not the kind of (tubes) you use for centrifuges",' Greg Thielmann, the director of proliferation for the INR, later said. In a lengthy memo to Powell late in 2001, and in a follow-up report in early 2002, the INR strongly disputed the CIA's tubes argument, as well as the rest of the case for a resurgent Iraqi nuclear program. 'The consistent message from INR,' Thielmann later noted, 'was that there is no good evidence' at all that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program."

[H2O Man]

16. More ....

Another important source is James Bamford's "A Pretext for War." (It was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 2004; a slightly different form, including an important afterword, was published in paperback by Anchor Books in 2005.) Let's look at a couple paragraphs on pages 289-290:

" 'Let me be blunt about this,' (Perle) said. 'The level of competence on past performance of the Central Intelligence Agency in this area is appalling. They are defensive -- and I think quite destructive -- in suggesting that anybody who didn't stand up and salute and accept that the CIA was the source of all wisdom on this is somehow engaged in nefarious activity. (That's) really outrageous.' Speaking of Wurmser's intelligence unit, Perle said,'Within a very short period of time, they began to find links that nobody else had previously understood or recorded in a useful way.'

"But instead of an honest, unbiased review of intelligence such as the CIA was charged with producing, the Wurmser intelligence unit would pluck selective bits and pieces of thread from a giant ball of yarn and weave them together into a frightening tapestry.

"Unitil he retired in October 2002, Gregory Thielmann was in charge of military assessments within the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He said the makeup of the intelligence unit was a giveaway, indicating that they had no interest in true analysis. Like Feith, Wurmser spent most of his career as a pro-Israeli activist and had no background at all in intelligence. 'Are they missle experts?' Thielmann asked. 'Nuclear engineers? There's no logical explanation for the office's creation except that they (the Bush administration) wanted people to find evidence to support their answers about war.'

"Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski agrees. 'It wasn't intelligence, it was propaganda,' she said. ....."

[Me.]

4. I Never Thought They Won The Argument Because They Were Smarter

though they may well be. I always thought they won the day because the deck was stacked. And I tend to think if they were so smart, things would have gone better in Iraq. As to that, however, they may have succeeded in their goals for do we really know what their aims actually were? If it was US hegemony, well that ship has sailed, though they keep trying. I hope, if nothing else, Tenet's book puts another nail in the noe?Cheney coffin for to this day, corrupt scion of Dick, Liz, is working with that foul Wurmser and Hannah (remember them?) to try to continue with the invasion plans for Syria.

Funny, how Tenet didn't seem to have any problems getting his book cleared for publication by the CIA.

[Mandate My Ass]

5. I agree. I don't think they outsmarted or out-argued their opponents

merely eliminated them through whatever methods they could.

Hey, if I wasn't convinced when they controlled the message, how smart could they be? :shrug:

[H2O Man]

7. I agree.

They thought they were smarter. But they weren't.

Tenet actually did have a few things that were removed by the Agency before it could be published.

[Me.]

9. Funny Though, How His Book Gets Published

V Plame's. However I might add that his book probably has more info on Cheney than she can reveaal.

[H2O Man]

10. I would think

that his will have lots about the "good old boys" politics that he participated in. Plame's world had a very different focus, that might prove more difficult to have okayed for publication.

[Me.]

13. You're Quite Right

What I meant was before hers. But you're right. Same agency, different cubbyhole. I confess to be really looking forward to her civil suit and who knows, his book may help her out.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

8. "self-mockingly call themselves The Cabal"

Ain't that endearing... Great information H2Oman. Thanks always for your piercing insights.

[bleever]

11. Utter contempt for the structure of government.

They weren't smarter. They just had no compunction about running roughshod over the lawfully established agencies and processes of American government.

With the audacity of the con men and forgers that they are, they were able to wreak incredible systemic havoc precisely because the scope of their ambition and disdain for American constitutional government made it difficult to even comprehend what they were up to until it was too late.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

[Me.]

12. Saw Kagan Tonight

Talk about a con man, I wanted to smack the "war is going fine" smugness right off his puffy, over filled face.

[bleever]

14. Since sig lines are currently off, let me say it:

*shadow government*.

AEI continues to offer safe harbor to domestic enemies of the Constitution, including people like Kagan.

[Me.]

15. Damn Missed That They Were Off

Let me join you in the vigil...

*shadow government*

[H2O Man]

17. As we come closer

to the trial of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in the neoconservative/AIPAC espionage scandal, it will be interesting to review why the FBI's counterespionage unit was investigating the case. Because it is rarely reported upon in the corporate media, few people are aware of the implications of this scandal. In fact, because of the the lack of reporting on it, those advocating the defendants' agenda are able to falsely present the case as being one of an attack on the "free press," which is as much a lie as when the same people pretended that the Plame scandal as an attack on the noble efforts of Judith Miller.

As DUers know, the FBI counterespionage unit was keeping a close eye on some of the players in this scandal since the late 1990s. Lawrence Franklin, the Defense Department analyst who worked for Doug Feith, and who has been convicted for his role in the espionage scandal, was not the original focus of the investigation, nor is he considered to have been the most significant person involved in the organized efforts to make military intelligence which was classified as "top secret" available to agents of a foreign nation's intelligence units.

Nor is AIPAC the only domestic group involved in this operation. I think that DUers should read an article by Robert Dreyfuss, the freelance writer who is a contributing editor at The Nation, and a frequent contributor to Mother Jones, The American Prospect, and Rolling Stone. His August 9, 2005 article "Bigger Than AIPAC" can be found at tompaine.com.

In it, he tells about information that is found on the federal indictment of Rosen, Weissman, and Franklin. "But from the carefully worded indictment," he writes, "it is clear that a lot more may have been going on. All in all, along with revealing tantalizing new information, the indictment raises more questions than it answers." It seems likely that this summer's trial could provide some of these answers.

Among the questions Dreyfuss found in the indictment was: "was AEI itself involved? The indictment says that 'on or about March 13, 2003, Rosen disclosed to a senior fellow at a Washington, DC, think tank the information relating to the classified draft internal policy document' about Iran. The indictment says that the think tank official agreed 'to follow up and see what he could do.' Which think tank, and who was involved? .....

" ....Franklin was introduced to Rosen-Weissman when the two AIPACers 'called a Department of Defense employee (DOD employee A) at the Pentagon and asked for the name of someone in OSD ISA (Office of the Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs) with an expertise on Iran' and got Franklin's name. Who was 'DOD employee A'? Was it Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy? Harold Rhode, the ghost-like neocon official who helped Feith assemble the secretive Office of Special Plans, where Franklin worked? The indictment doesn't say. But this reporter observed Franklin, Rhode and Michael Rubin, a former AEI official who served in the Pentagon during this period and then returned to AEI, sitting together side by side, often in the front row, at American Enterprise Institute meetings during 2002-2003. Later in the indictment, we learn that Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman hobnobbed with 'DOD employee B,' too."

[Me.]

18. Which Think Tank & Who Was Involved?

Because Franklin paled around with Rhodes & Ledeen I'm thinking them. As to the think tank, if it isn't AEI, which would have been my first guess it seems to me it would have to be either the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society. They are all basically the same to me an run along the same lines with the same people.

Is there any, as far as we know, involvement of the Kagans in the AIPAC scandal?

An interesting article in the Guardian, about the 10 steps to American fascism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

[H2O Man]

19. It is safe

to say that it was AEI.

[Me.]

20. And What About Condi?

Rosen and Weissman: "Two former AIPAC lobbyists say Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was their informant on sensitive national security matters." source: Jewish Week pic, file

http://www.newsfollowup.com/aipac.htm

“Two former AIPAC lobbyists say Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was their informant on sensitive national security matters.

The claim, laid out in a courtroom here last Friday, intensified the drama surrounding a trial that could further roil a Washington political establishment already consumed by cases involving “official” and “unofficial” leaks.

The trial date, originally scheduled to begin April 25, has now been set for Aug. 7, even as the judge in the case continues to suggest the case might not go to trial at all.

In last week’s pretrial hearing, lawyers for Steve Rosen, the pro-Israel lobby’s former foreign policy director, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, persuaded federal Judge T.S. Ellis III to allow a subpoena for the secretary of state and three other current and former Middle East policy officials.” Cont…

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=12361

Affiliations
# Hoover Institution: Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow (on leave)
# Council on Foreign Relations: Member, Former Fellow
# Stanford University: Former Provost
# American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Fellow
# Flora Hewlett Foundation: Former Board Member
# University of Notre Dame: Former Board Member
# Carnegie Corporation: Former Board Member
# Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Former Board Member
# National Council for Soviet and East European Studies: Former Board Member

[H2O Man]

26. It's a strange case.

For a number of reasons, it has not grabbed the headlines as the closely-related Plame scandal did, from time to time.

This summer, there will be attempts to shift focus and blame on to Condi Rice. And while I am all for holding her 100% responsible for those things she has done that were illegal and/or wrong, in this case, much of what the AIPAC defense is doing is ugly. I assume that Rice's efforts to at least consider communicating with the powers that be in Iran, rather than push the neoconservative agenda for conflict, is at the root of this.

If people are interested in an interesting document, they should look for the Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint and Arrest Warrent filed in the Alexandria Division, the Eastern District of Virginia's US District Court, filed on 5-3-05. It was under seal, but I am sure that it has been made public, and can be found at www.FindLaw.com as part of case # 1:05 mj 309.

The document is the affidavit sworn by Catherine M. Hanna, a Special Agent with the Bureau's Counterintelligence Unit. These are serious people, and they aren't investigating minor crimes. If one reads this, along with the indictments, the neocon/AIPAC espionage scandal seems pretty darned important, after all.

[Me.]

27. So She's Being Set Up?

Will she and can she fight back? Also, let's not forget that Miss Girl Run Amok (aka Judy Miller) also figures prominently in this case.

[H2O Man]

28. I'm not sure

what they think they have on Rice. It would not make sense to say that she has shared classified information with reporters and/or foreign officials. She is not on trial, and the charges against the AIPAC officials are rather specific. If we look at Libby's trial strategy, we see that the attorneys for "guilty as hell" clients often try to distract, bluff, and pressure officials in high places.

Ms. Miller is connected to a related case, involving the warning of a group about to be visited by the FBI. The "journalist" most closely connected to this case works for the Washington Post. But it involves the same type of thing, where a journalist seems to be operating on a couple levels.

[Me.]

29. Graymail On Condi? & This

“Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is also acting as a special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe, informed the Times by letter last week that his office has subpoenaed telephone company records. The move is part of an effort to determine whether anyone in the government told Times reporters of planned federal asset seizures in December 2001 at the offices of an Islamic charity suspected of providing funding to al Qaeda, according to several sources familiar with the case.

The FBI believes that a call from a reporter to a representative of the charity, the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, may have led to the destruction of documents there the night before the government's raid, according to findings by the Sept. 11 commission.

The subpoena seeks the phone records of two Times reporters, Philip Shenon and Judith Miller, according to the sources. Officials at the Times and in Fitzgerald's office refused to comment.” Cont…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9890-2004Sep9.html

[Me.]

30. Also What Do You Think About The Silent Witness Ruling?

“This week, federal prosecutors proposed a procedure that while purporting to protect national defense secrets would have denied the AIPAC defendants a public trial and exposed this information to more than a dozen people with no security clearances and no obligation to keep this information secret. Federal judge T.S. Ellis, III laughed them out of court.

In the old Get Smart TV series Maxwell Smart and his superior exchanged secrets under an elaborate contraption called the Cone of Silence. It had a small problem: Under the Cone they couldn't hear each other but everyone else in the room could. I thought of it when I read a transcript of a hearing on April 16 in U.S v. Rosen and Weissman (The AIPAC Case). I thought of it because the government proposed and the Court rejected a ridiculous proposed procedure under which the case would be tried.

In this prosecution the government contends that the discussion between the defendants and the then-US employee Larry Franklin involved national defense information, and the government proposed an expansion of a rarely used tool "the silent witness" to keep from the public what the information in question was.

Judge Ellis ruled favorably on the defense motion to strike the government's proposed procedure for dealing with classified and NDI (nation defense information) material, which comprises the heart of the case. The Government had proposed an extension of "the silent witness rule" pursuant to which classified documents go the jury and all the testimony about the documents and the information contained in them is done by reference to the document without public disclosure of the contents of the document.” Cont…

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/no_secret_trail_for_aipac_defe_1.html



Federal judge rejects secrecy for AIPAC trial

By The Associated Press
04.17.07

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Prosecutors suffered a setback yesterday in their case against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the 1917 Espionage Act when a federal judge rejected the government's proposal for conducting much of the trial in secret.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis said the government's proposal to keep huge swaths of evidence in the case out of public view was unprecedented and violated the both the defendants' and the public's right to an open trial.

The defendants — Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, who had been lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — are charged with illegally disclosing sensitive national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it, including journalists and foreign diplomats.

Concerned that a public trial would result in wholesale disclosures of classified and sensitive information, prosecutors proposed a procedure that would have kept "the heart of the case" forever shielded from public view, Ellis said.” Cont…

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=18427

[H2O Man]

31. I think that

there is pressure from people in positions above the folks prosecuting the case, to keep it from going to court. It is very difficult for honest investigators and honest prosecutors to win cases like these, when there are outside influences placing stumbling blocks in the way.

[Me.]

32. Judith Miller is Unnamed Woman in AIPAC Spy Ring Indictmen

The AIPAC Indictment can be found at:

http://www.newsfollowup.com/indictment.htm#swasia

[zippy890]

21. what is the name of Tenet's new book?

I would think he would be quite popular as a guest
on the book-promotion tv/radio circuit - this could get
really interesting after his book comes out.

[H2O Man]

22. I believe that

he is scheduled to appear on CBS's 60 Minutes this weekend. Though I do not get CBS, I am under the impression that they are promoting this as one of the more significant segments. I think that there were a few threads about this in the past week. I'll look to see if I can find a link.

[Me.]

24. You Know...

I don't think people are focusing on how important this AIPAC thing is. As with Plame in the beginning. The ramifications of what could come out at trial are huge. A real pebble to the juggernaut. That is if Judge Ellis isn't an impediment. Don't know about the prosecutor either. Any tips on his track record?

[Annces]

23. It is called "At the Center of the Storm"

Interview on 4/29 on 60 minutes.

http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/4/22/210120.shtml?s=lh

[myrna minx]

25. Thanks. I didn't know he would be on 60 minutes. n/t

[Me.]

33. Kick

:kick:

[Blackhatjack]

34. Preview clips of the 60 Min Tenet interview --he defends extraordinary interrogation(torture)

Says it saved American lives, helped us break up attacks.

One question: If a man is tortured to get information, how do you know the information is accurate(since a tortured individual will say anything you want him to in order to stop the torture)????