The Pentagon released its own preemptive strike as Carl Levin's Senate Armed Services Committee commences Hearings today into the massive fraud and deception operation that led America to invade Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Here's this morning's headline about the DoD Inspector General's report on Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans (OSP):
Pentagon says pre-war intel not illegalROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Some of the Pentagon's prewar intelligence work, including a contention that the CIA underplayed the likelihood of al-Qaida connections to Saddam Hussein, was inappropriate but not illegal, a Defense Department investigation has concluded.
In a report to be presented to Congress on Friday, the department's inspector general said former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith had not engaged in illegal activities through the creation of special offices to review intelligence.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/16654759.htm Before anyone takes this at face value, there are serious questions whether the DoD IG was even competent to make such a judgment. Consider this . . .
There's some damning evidence about the DoD IGs that we all need to look at. Are the Bush political appointees even competent to make such a legal judgment? There's serious reason to doubt it.
The issue of legality will have to be revisited, along with questions about the essential competence of those who oversaw this investigation. Consider the (lack) of calibre of Joseph E. Schmitz, who held the office of Pentagon Inspector General from 2002-05 until he was hastily replaced by the temporary appointment of Thomas F. Gimble, a career accountant:
Schmitz as Inspector General
Schmitz was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Defense Department Inspector General on June 18, 2001. His nomination was held up in the Senate Armed Services Committee for unknown reasons until March 21, 2002, when he was confirmed by the full Senate by voice vote. In his confirmation hearings, committee Democrats expressed concern about a letter that Schmitz had written to the Washington Times in 1991 in which he had accused then-candidate Bill Clinton of treasonous actions and had inappropriately signed the letter with his military rank.
According to an AP report dated December 5, 2001, the Inspector General's office had recently failed a "peer review" audit in which it was shown that IG officials had destroyed documents relating to an investigation. Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, a supporter of the Schmitz nomination and critic of the IG's office, commented that "nce President Bush's nominee for the IG job is in place, he will need to clean house from top to bottom. Heads must roll," because of the document destruction.
Upon taking office, Schmitz hired L. Jean Lewis, a Republican operative and whistleblower in the Whitewater Affair. Lewis, a former Resolution Trust Corporation investigator, was a pivotal figure in publicizing the alleged financial misdeeds of President Bill Clinton and wife Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. She marketed products with pictures of Mrs. Clinton and the logo "B.I.T.C.H.: Bill, I'm Taking Charge. Hillary." Schmitz eventually created the position of "Chief of Staff" for Lewis.
Insight Magazine, in its September 30, 2002, issue, reported that shortly after his arrival at the IG, Schmitz ordered a "bottom-up review" that was conducted by Military Professionals Resources, Inc. (MPRI), a defense contractor based in Alexandria, Va. The review resulted in the removal of a number of senior civil servants in the agency. Sen. Grassley quoted by Insight, said, "The new inspector general, Mr. Joe Schmitz, has already started to clean house. Heads have started to roll with more to come . . . Based on what I've heard and seen, the Independent Review Team appears to be on the right track. The team appears to see the very same problems that I see and seems to be headed toward a hard-hitting final report." According to the September 23, 2002 issue of Defense Week, the removed civil servants filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a government agency that investigates whistleblower complaints and Hatch Act violations. In its June 23, 2003 issue, Defense Week reported that the matter was settled to the satisfaction of both parties involved, but suggested that the removed civil servants had been vindicated.
According to the Los Angeles Times (September 25, 2005), Schmitz had an "unusual fascination" with Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian officer appointed Inspector General of the Continental Army by George Washington. "The Nation" (September 25, 2005) magazine reported that Schmitz spent three months redesigning the seal of the Inspector General's office to include elements of von Steuben's family crest, including the von Steuben family motto, Sub Tutela Altissimi Semper, "Under the Protection of the Almighty." (Schmitz was quoted in the LA Times article as saying that the eagle of the previous seal looked "like a chicken".) Schmitz authored an article in the in-house journal of the federal inspectors general about Von Steuben and mentioned him in virtually every speech he made while in office ("The Enduring Legacy of Inspector General von Steuben," Public Inquiry, F/W 2002, <1>. "He was consumed with all things German and all things Von Steuben," said a government official quoted in the LA Times article. "He was obsessed."
Schmitz also took an unusual interest in the sex slave trade. His office investigated the involvement of the U.S. military in the sex trade in South Korea, Bosnia, and Kosovo, but found little beyond the propensity of soldiers to frequent brothels, an inexcusable moral lapse, according to Schmitz's testimony before Congress and an article he wrote that was published on the website of the World Security Network. <2>.
Schmitz's downfall apparently began when he and John A. "Jack" Shaw, former DoD Deputy Undersecretary for International Technology Security signed an agreement giving Shaw authority to investigate telecommunications contracting fraud in Iraq sometime in 2003. According to the Los Angeles Times (September 3, 2005), Shaw used the results of his investigation to steer contracts to friends. When confronted with the case, Schmitz referred it to the FBI for investigation, even though IG agents claimed they had enough evidence of Shaw's illegal activities for prosecution.
The Los Angeles Times article also claims that Schmitz interfered in other investigations of senior officials:
The Air Force Academy sex scandal, in which senior Air Force Academy officials were accused of failing to investigate rape allegations by female cadets.
A contracting scandal involving the Air Force and Boeing Corporation, in which senior Air Force officials, including former Air Force Secretary James Roche, were accused of steering contracts to the Boeing Corporation. Before presenting his report to Congress, Schmitz allegedly sent it to the White House for review. The names of several White House officials were reportedly redacted from the report. Sen. Charles Grassley was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying to Schmitz, "That decision ... raises questions about your independence." Testimony by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in which he blamed his lack of oversight on incompetency, was deleted, said Schmitz, because Rumsfeld had not said anything relevant. <3>
Grassley, who had become disillusioned with Schmitz, was particularly upset by Schmitz's plans to travel to Potsdam, Germany at taxpayer expense, where he was to speak at a ceremony commemorating Baron von Steuben. Schmitz was forced to cancel the trip.
Resignation
Schmitz resigned as Defense Department Inspector General on September 9, 2005 in order to take a position with the Prince Group a holding company for Blackwater USA, which provides security services and training to the U.S. military in Iraq and elsewhere. In a letter dated June 15, 2005, and posted on the Inspector General's website on September 2, 2005, Schmitz recused himself from investigating all matters related to Blackwater.
The Los Angeles Times quoted Danielle Bryan of the Project on Government Oversight as saying, "He's a person who did not put the appearance of ethics above all else . . . That is not the way the government should function. These are the kind of things that make the general public distrust government."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Schmitz http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/schmitz_bio.html(Hat-tip to KoKo01 for posting this Wiki extract earlier)
Henry Waxman's Minority Counsel to the House Committee on Oversight and Investigative Reform found a generalized pattern of cronyism and politicized appointments during this Administration in a report,
Politicization of Inspectors General:
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=726&Issue=Administration%2bOversightAt the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, this report examines the backgrounds of the 43 IGs appointed under the Inspector General Act by Presidents Bush and Clinton over the last 12 years. It finds that IG appointments have become increasingly politicized during the administration of President Bush. Whereas President Clinton typically appointed nonpartisan career public servants as IGs, President Bush has repeatedly chosen individuals with Republican political backgrounds. Over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Bush had prior political experience, such as service in a Republican White House or on a Republican congressional staff, while fewer than 20% had prior audit experience. In contrast, over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Clinton had prior audit experience, while fewer than 25% had prior political experience.
Specifically, the report tells us that Schmidt said about Halliburton overbilling practices in 2004, "I haven't seen any deliberate gouging of the taxpayers." He also remarked after returning from an inspection trip to Abu Ghraibh prison that the problems there were the result of "a few bad apples." See, pp. 10-12.
http://www.oversight.house.gov/Documents/20050111164847-37108.pdfHis replacement, Acting IG Thomas F. Gimble, is a career DoD auditor. While Gimble is undoubtedly far more competent to track the Department's finances, it is unclear whether he has the sort of in-depth criminal investigative and counter-intelligence experience required to fully unearth the crimes of espionage and cooked intelligence committed at OSP. Mr. Gimble's DoD biography here:
http://www.dodig.osd.mil/BIOs/gimble_bio.htmlA summary search showed that Mr. Gimble is the author of DoD manuals on organization, staffing and budget but returned no references to publications he might have authored on subjects specific to intelligence investigations or intelligence law. There's every reason to believe that the current IG is honest and diligent with a a great deal of experience spotting contracting irregularities. But, there is little to give one confidence that Mr. Gimble is the best equipped to look into the OSP case and make a legal judgment about it.
Curiously, in his prepared testimony given to the House Armed Services Committee on January 18, 2007, Mr. Gimble did not even reference the OSP investigation when he discussed matters related to intelligence probed by his office.
http://armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/Gimble_Testimony_011807.pdf.When we take a look at his testimony and news sources that mention Mr. Gimbel and the DoD IG's office related to intelligence, we see that his work has been on contracting fraud rather than investigations of criminal activity of the sort evident in the OSP-AIPAC case. The DoD IG has not in the past been required to make independent judgments about the legality of intelligence operations, that sort of decision either being made by JAG military lawyers or referred to the FBI and the US Attorneys Office, as it was in the Plame case.
This suggests that the DoD Office of the Inspector General may not have made a thorough assessment of the legal and counter-intelligence issues raised by Mr. Feith's activities. The fact remains, however, that the scandal at OSP has already produced the conviction of Lt. Col. Larry Franklin, on espionage charges that he conspired with the head of Mossad Chief of Station in Washington to spike Pentagon files with information "suggested" by Israeli intelligence. That certainly presents evidence that something criminal was indeed afoot in Douglas Feith's Pentagon policy shop.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/2/14024/94613 ;
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/1/183411/6866 The IG's report clearly lacks the objectivity, independence and expertise required to reach such an important judgment. It can not be considered the definitive word on illegalites committed by Feith and his co-conspirators at OSP.
The role of OSP in fabricating fraudulent intelligence, and the question of whether espionage played a major role in America's decision to go to war, will indeed require in-depth Congressional hearings with an eye toward appointment of a Special Counsel.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
