"Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president."

The charge in Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein with lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta is so explosive, it caused White House press spokesman Tony Fratto to mimic Nixon administration Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. (Fratto called Suskind's book "gutter journalism", Ziegler called Woodward & Bernstein's Watergate investigation "shabby journalism".) The aftermath of the media spotlight and the subsequent political blowback caused his sources to backtrack on their support of Suskind's charge. In response, Suskind did something he describes as "contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist" by releasing transcripts of his interviews with one of his sources, Rob Richer. It is worth reading it all to get a sense of context, but this exchange sticks out:

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.

http://www.ronsuskind.com/thewayoftheworld/transcripts/


Philip Giraldi has a source that both confirms and refutes portions of this statement:

An extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community has informed me that Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but that a number of details are wrong.

The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source. Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.

My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/08/07/suskind-revisited/


Exactly how did this "shop around the vice president" specialize in such activity? I believe William Pitt gives the best description:

WHIG, and its intention to sell an unnecessary war to a shell-shocked public, is only half the story. The other half of the manipulative sales team could be found in the neighborhood occupied by the Department of Defense. The Office of Special Plans, or OSP, was created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld specifically to second-guess and reinterpret intelligence data to justify war in Iraq. Think of it like baseball: the OSP pitched, and WHIG caught.

The OSP was on no government payroll and suffered no Congressional oversight. Their tainted information and interpretations overtopped the Iraq data being provided by the State Department and CIA. The OSP was able to accomplish this thanks to devoted patronage from high-ranking members of the administration, most prominently Vice-President Cheney.

The highest levels of the OSP were staffed by heavy-hitters like Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Cheney before joining the Pentagon. When the OSP wanted to intimidate analysts into shaping conclusions to fit the already-made war decision, Cheney went to CIA headquarters on unprecedented visits. Once there, he demanded "forward-leaning" interpretations of the evidence. When Cheney was unable to go to the CIA, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, went in his place.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101705I.shtml

Or if anyone wants to dig deeper into OSP and their "B Team", CTEG, here's a direct link to my 2nd edition of American Judas:

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html

shine through the clutter of nobody's business. .

"FORGED HABBUSH LETTER LINKED TO CHENEY"

Instead our tawdry corporate-run press sells:

"EDWARDS ADMITS TO CHEATING ON WIFE"

K & R

I'm wondering if there was coordination of these 2 groups (which of course would make some Democrats complicit).


Bayh As Veep? But He Co-Chaired Neocon Committee For The Liberation Of Iraq With McCain!

By Greg Sargent - July 16, 2008, 6:03PM
Senator Evan Bayh's appearance today with Barack Obama at the "21st Century Threats" summit has stirred a lot of talk in the press about the possibility of him being on Obama's Veep short-list.

But we're not sure that's such a viable idea. That's because in 2003, Bayh was an honorary co-chair of the neocon pro-war Committee for the Liberation of Iraq -- a group he joined along with none other than John McCain and Joe Lieberman, according to a press release from during the run-up to the invasion.

Check this out, from the group's press release on February 14th, 2003 (via Nexis):

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) is pleased to welcome Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) as an Honorary Co-Chairman. Bayh becomes the third U.S. Senator to join the committee after Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced their participation on January 28.
The Committee is a neo-con group that was formed to propagandize the country into war. It boasted such illustrious neocon members as Bill Kristol, former CIA director James Woolsey, and even McCain senior foreign policy adviser and Chalabi-bamboozler Randy Scheunemann, whom Josh has been blogging about.

-snip

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/bayh_as_veep_he_cochaired_wing.php

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq:
PR Spinning the Bush Doctrine
By Kurt Nimmo
CounterPunch
November 19, 2002

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq bills itself as an NGO comprised of a "distinguished group of Americans" who want to bomb Saddam Hussein out of existence. Of course, NGO is a misnomer for this particular organization because its advisory board is stacked with former government types, including George Shultz. The president of the Committee is Randy Scheunemann, Trent Lott's former chief national-security adviser. Last year Scheunemann worked for Donald Rumsfeld as a consultant on Iraq policy. The Committee chairman is Bruce P. Jackson, the former vice president of the mega-defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Jackson chaired the Republican Party Platform's subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy when Bush ran for president in 2000. Jackson was also big on expanding the role of NATO -- think of all the new weapons that will be required -- and headed up a campaign to get Congress to ratify NATO's eastward expansion. Other NGO types include former Senator Bob Kerrey and former "Drug Czar" Barry McCaffrey. You may remember McCaffrey. As a two-star general and Gulf War "hero," McCaffrey ordered the massacre of hundreds of retreating soldiers and civilians on the Basra road from Kuwait to southern Iraq.

On November 15 US Newswire released a Committee press release. "The Committee was formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security through replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations."

The Committee press release, however, mentions absolutely nothing about how these objectives will be achieved. But then, considering who is involved with the Committee, we don't need much of an explanation -- in essence, the Committee is a PR front for the Bush attack Iraq policy currently under way full steam ahead. The Committee is little more than an extension of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), an "educational" organization packed with neocons such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC, according to its web page, is "dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle." In other words, Pax Americana installed unilaterally by way of bunker-buster and cluster bomb diplomacy. Lest you think PNAC and the Committee are not joined at the hip, consider who agreed to be an officer of this new (non) NGO -- Gary Schmitt, PNAC's executive director.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/credib/2002/1119bush.htm


The best evidence of CLI/WHIG coordination is here:

Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
From SourceWatch

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) bills itself as a nongovernmental organization comprised of a "distinguished group of Americans" who want to free Iraq from Saddam Hussein. In a news release announcing its formation, the groups said it wants to "promote regional peace, political freedom and international security through replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations." It has close links to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), important shapers of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Many CLI, PNAC and AEI members were previously involved with the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), a hard-right group created in 1990 prior to Operation Desert Storm.

The Washington Post reported in November 2002 that "the organization is modeled on a successful lobbying campaign to expand the NATO alliance. Members include former secretary of state George P. Shultz, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). ... While the Iraq committee is an independent entity, committee officers said they expect to work closely with the administration. They already have met with Hadley and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Committee officers and a White House spokesman said Rice, Hadley and Cheney will soon meet with the group."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_for_the_Liberation_of_Iraq

Was there any surprise they were preparing a war for profit?

"Bruce P. Jackson, former vice president of the mega-defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Jackson chaired the Republican Party Platform's subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy"

Thanks for the links, Robert. :hi: I always appreciate your well informed posts.

General Wayne Downing, U.S. Army (retired), has been a lobbyist for the Iraqi National Congress, the CIA-bankrolled opposition to Saddam Hussein

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_for_the_Liberation_of_Iraq


Look who Wayne Downing is intimately associated with:

In 1997–1998, Downing co-wrote a plan with CIA veteran Duane "Dewey" Clarridge to overthrow Saddam Hussein using Kurdish and Shi'ite fighters. Clarridge was CIA Division Chief, and chief of CIA Contra support operations from 1982–1984. Clarridge met regularly with Manuel Noriega, Jorge Morales and other narco-traffickers. He helped Oliver North establish the Ilopango air base in El Salvador as a staging point for Contra supply/CIA cocaine operations. A major Iran-Contra player, he was indicted on seven counts of perjury by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. He also supplied logistics help that sent US arms to Iran. In his notorious final act as president, George H.W. Bush pardoned Clarridge, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and Robert McFarlane—-all of whom have played active roles in recent anti-Saddam operations.

http://onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/Chin110702/chin110702.html


Clarridge was also intimately involved with another famous forgery:

The identity of two of these ex-CIA officers was revealed by a former CIA officer in a story Justin Raimondo broke that Patrick Fitzgerald, in his grand jury investigation of the Plame scandal, had received ‘a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document. Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi.' Wolf is dead now, but was CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. The former CIA officer says Wolf ‘was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop.’ Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report with Paul McNulty, the prosecutor in the AIPAC case.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P2452_0_1_0

these crooks, not sweep it under the rug as ole Bill did. I felt the Clinton's are so entrenched that they provide more cover for the thugs. I only hope that Obama can pull off a win w our current election system (I believe he should win) and will recall why he was drawn to constitutional studies and social justice.

closely related to the Niger yellow cake forgery.

Nominated.

:)

Here's another interesting fact from Joe Conason in Salon:

On Dec. 14, 2003, the Sunday Telegraph hyped the phony Habbush memo as a front-page exclusive over the byline of Con Coughlin, the paper's foreign editor and chief Mideast correspondent, who has earned a reputation for promoting neoconservative claptrap. As I explained in a Salon blog post on Dec. 18, the story's sudden appearance in London was the harbinger of a disinformation campaign that quickly blew back to the United States -- where it was cited by William Safire on the New York Times Op-Ed page. Ignoring the bizarre Niger yellowcake reference, which practically screamed bullshit, Safire seized on Coughlin's story as proof of his own cherished theory about Saddam's sponsorship of 9/11.

Soon enough, however, the Habbush memo was discredited in Newsweek and elsewhere as a forgery for many reasons, notably including its contradiction of established facts concerning Atta's travels during 2001.

But the credulous Telegraph coverage is still significant now, because Coughlin identified the source of his amazing scoop as Ayad Allawi. For those who have forgotten the ambitious Allawi, he is a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam, formed the Iraqi National Accord movement to fight the dictator, and was appointed to Iraq's interim Governing Council by the U.S. occupation authorities after the invasion.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/08/08/suskind/

Speaking of the Niger forgeries, I wonder if Allawi might not have a close connection with, say, Michael Ledeen?

It seems to confirm much of what some DUers had been saying back in the good old days of the "Plame Threads."

matter HOW it happened, but yes it does.