[Peace-discuss] FW: The Dubious Suicide of George Tenet

[Marianne Br ü n]

----------
Von: portsideMod at netscape.net
Antworten an: portside at yahoogroups.com
Datum: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 21:44:51 -0400
An: portside at yahoogroups.com
Betreff: The Dubious Suicide of George Tenet

The Dubious Suicide of George Tenet
    
    By William Rivers Pitt t r u th o u t | Perspective

    Monday 14 July 2003

    Things have reached a pretty pass indeed when you apologize for
making a mistake, but nobody believes your apology. So it is today
with CIA Director Tenet, and by proxy George W. Bush and his
administration.

    On Friday evening, CIA Director Tenet publicly jumped on the Niger
evidence hand grenade, claiming the use in Bush's State of the Union
Address in January 2003 of data from known forgeries to support the
Iraq war was completely his fault. He never told Bush's people that
the data was corrupted, and it was his fault those "sixteen words"
regarding Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from Niger for a nuclear
program made it into the text of the speech.

    Problem solved, right? Condoleezza Rice and Don Rumsfeld had been
triangulating on Tenet since Thursday, claiming the CIA had never
informed the White House about the dubious nature of the Niger
evidence. Tenet, like a good political appointee, fell on his sword
and took responsibility for the error. On Saturday, White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press corps that Bush had "moved on"
from this controversy.

    Not so fast, said the New York Times editorial board. The paper of
record for the Western world published an editorial on Saturday
entitled "The Uranium Fiction." The last time the Times editors used
language this strong was when Bush, in a moment of seemingly deranged
hubris, tried to nominate master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger to
chair the 9/11 investigation:

    "It is clear, however, that much more went into this affair than
the failure of the C.I.A. to pounce on the offending 16 words in Mr.
Bush's speech. A good deal of information already points to a willful
effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation
that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited
long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of
Representatives last January. Doubts about the accusation were raised
in March 2002 by Joseph Wilson, a former American diplomat, after he
was dispatched to Niger by the C.I.A. to look into the issue. Mr.
Wilson has said he is confident that his concerns were circulated not
only within the agency but also at the State Department and the office
of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Tenet, in his statement yesterday,
confirmed that the Wilson findings had been given wide distribution,
although he reported that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other high
officials had not been directly informed about them by the C.I.A."

    The sun came up over Washington DC on Sunday and shined on copies
of the Washington Post which were waiting patiently to be read. The
lead headline for the Sunday edition read, "CIA Got Uranium Reference
Cut in October." The meat of the article states:

    "CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White
House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger
removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a
less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State
of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.

    "Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including
deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation
should not be used because it came from only a single source,
according to one senior official. Another senior official with
knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the
accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months
later turned out to be forged."

    What do we have here?

    Here is CIA Director Tenet arguing in October of 2002 against the
use of the Niger evidence, stating bluntly that it was useless. He
made this pitch directly to the White House. These concerns were
brushed aside by Bush officials, and the forged evidence was used
despite the warnings in the State of the Union address. Now, the
administration is trying to claim they were never told the evidence
was bad. Yet between Tenet's personal appeals in 2002, and Ambassador
Wilson's assurances that everyone who needed to know was in the know
regarding Niger, it appears the Bush White House has been caught
red-handed in a series of incredible falsehoods.

    There are two more layers on this onion to be peeled. The first
concerns Secretary of State Powell. One week after the Niger evidence
was used by Bush in the State of the Union address, Powell presented
to the United Nations the administration's case for war. The Niger
evidence was notably absent from Powell's presentation. According to
CBS News, Powell said, "I didn't use the uranium at that point because
I didn't think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present
before the world."

    What a difference a week makes. The White House would have us
believe they were blissfully unaware of the forged nature of their war
evidence when Bush gave his State of the Union address, and yet
somehow the Secretary of State knew well enough to avoid using it just
seven days later. The moral of the story appears to be that rotten war
evidence is not fit for international consumption, but is perfectly
suitable for delivery to the American people.

    The second layer to be peeled deals with the administration's
newest excuse for using the forged Niger evidence to justify a war.
They are claiming now that they used it because the British government
told them it was solid. Yet there was the story published by the
Washington Post on July 11 with the headline, "CIA Asked Britain to
Drop Iraq Claim." The article states:

    "The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade
the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a
reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President
Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later,
senior Bush administration officials said yesterday. 'We consulted
about the paper and recommended against using that material,' a senior
administration official familiar with the intelligence program said."

    We are supposed to believe that the Bush administration was
completely unaware that their Niger evidence was fake. We are supposed
to believe George Tenet dropped the ball. Yet the CIA actively
intervened with the British government in September of 2002, telling
them the evidence was worthless. The CIA Director personally got the
evidence stricken from a Bush speech in October of 2002. Intelligence
insiders like Joseph Wilson and Greg Thielmann have stated repeatedly
that everyone who needed to know the evidence was bad had been fully
and completely informed almost a year before the data was used in the
State of the Union address.

    In an interesting twist, the profoundly questionable nature of
Tenet's confession has reached all the way around the planet to
Australia. I spoke on Sunday to Andrew Wilkie, a former senior
intelligence analyst for the Office of National Assessments, the
senior Australian intelligence agency which provides intelligence
assessments to the Australian prime minister. Mr. Wilkie notes the
following:

    "In the last week in Australia, the Defense Intelligence
Organization has admitted they had the information on the Niger
forgeries and says they didn't tell the Defense Minister. The
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs has admitted they had the
information on the Niger forgeries and didn't tell the Foreign
Minister. The place I used to work, the Office of National
Assessments, has admitted publicly that they knew the Niger evidence
was fake and didn't tell the Prime Minister about it.

    "You've got three intelligence organizations in Australia, the
intelligence organizations in the US, and every one is saying they
knew this was bad information, but not one political leader reckons
they were told. All three organizations have said they didn't give
this information to their political leaders. It is unbelievable to the
point of fantasy."

    I also spoke on Sunday with Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the
CIA who was interviewed by truthout on these matters on June 26 2003.
Mr. McGovern is not buying what the White House is trying to sell.

    "Tenet's confession is designed to take the heat off," says
McGovern, "to assign some responsibility somewhere. It's not going to
work. There's too much deception here. For example, Condoleezza Rice
insisted that she only learned on June 8 about Former Ambassador
Wilson's mission to Niger back in February 2002. That means that
neither she nor her staff reads the New York Times, because Nick
Kristof on May 6 had a very detailed explication of Wilson's mission
to Niger. In my view, it is inconceivable that her remark this week -
that she didn't know about Joe Wilson's mission to Niger until she was
asked on a talk show on June 8 - that is stretching the truth beyond
the breaking point."

    Andrew Wilkie crystallized the issue at hand by stating, "Remember
that the sourcing of uranium from Niger was the only remaining pillar
of the argument that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear
program. By this stage, the aluminum tubes story about Iraq's nuclear
program had been laughed out of the room. That had been laughable
since 2001, leaving the sourcing of uranium as the last key piece of
evidence about Iraq reconstituting a nuclear program. It's not just
sixteen words.

    "It is just downright mischievous to hear Condoleezza Rice on CNN
this morning saying it was just sixteen words. It was worth a hell of
a lot more than sixteen words. I can remember that October speech by
Bush where he talked about "mushroom clouds" from Iraq. The nuclear
story was always played up as the most emotive and persuasive theme.
It wasn't just sixteen words."

    A page on the White House's own website describes the Bush
administration's central argument for war in Iraq. The Niger evidence
is featured prominently, along with claims that Iraq was in possession
of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500
tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents, almost 30,000 munitions
capable of delivering chemical agents, and several mobile biological
weapons labs. The Niger evidence has been destroyed, and the 'mobile
weapons labs' have been shown to be weather balloon launching
platforms. The vast quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin,
mustard gas and VX, along with the munitions to deliver them, have
completely failed to show up.

    Many people quail at the idea that the President and his people
could have lied so egregiously. What was in it for them? Besides the
incredible amounts of money to be made from the war by oil and defense
corporations like Halliburton and United Defense, two companies with
umbilical ties to the administration, there was an "ancillary benefit
to all this," according to Ray McGovern. "Not only did the President
get an authorization to make war, but there was an election that next
month, the November midterms. The elections turned out surprisingly
well for the Bush administration because they were able to use charges
of being 'soft on Saddam' against those Democratic candidates who
voted against the war."

    As Andrew Wilkie says, this issue is not about sixteen words in a
speech. It is about lies and American credibility. "All of this
breaking news is actually distracting us from the core issue," says
Wilkie. "The core issue is the credibility gap. We were sold this war
on the promise that Iraq had this massive WMD arsenal. Of course that
hasn't been found, and whatever might be found now is not going to
satisfy in any way that description of the 'massive' arsenal, the
'imminent threat,' and all those great words used in Britain and
Australia and Washington. We've got to be careful that, in debating
the details on the issue of Tenet and Niger, we are not distracted
from that core issue which is still left to be resolved."

    William Rivers Pitt <mailto:william.pitt at m...> is the Managing
Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times best-selling author of
two books - "War On Iraq" available now from Context Books, and "The
Greatest Sedition is Silence," now available from Pluto Press at
www.SilenceIsSedition.com.


    (c) Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org


__________________________________________________________________
McAfee VirusScan Online from the Netscape Network.
Comprehensive protection for your entire computer. Get your free trial
today!
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/computing/mcafee/index.jsp?promo=393397

Get AOL Instant Messenger 5.1 free of charge.  Download Now!
http://aim.aol.com/aimnew/Aim/register.adp?promo=380455


portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a
news, discussion and debate service of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It
aims to provide varied material of interest to people
on the left.

Post            : mail to 'portside at yahoogroups.com'
Subscribe       : mail to 'portside-subscribe at yahoogroups.com'
Unsubscribe     : mail to 'portside-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com'
Faq             : http://www.portside.org
List owner      : portside-owner at yahoogroups.com
Web address     : <http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/portside>
Digest mode     : visit Web site
 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/