-------- Original Message --------
From: "greenmannowar" <cdmaman@...>
Subject: [frameup] 3 reports from defense link.mil just BEFORE Sept 11
To: frameup@yahoogroups.com

I was just poking around the defenselink.mil site to see what was
posted just before Sept 11 2001.
I came up with some pretty interesting stuff.
What do you guys make of this ???

--------

Three reports of interest o­n the defencelink US military website.

First, Bechtel, Raytheon, BAE and Halliburton were rewarded LARGE
contracts according to info posted to the Defenselink  military site
o­n Sept 10th 2001. Some of these contracts had to do with WMD's, a
phrase rarely used before 911.


The second article is about Anthrax!!!??? ( Sept 6 2001)


The third article has to do with taks about Iraq This was posted to
the link Tuesday, Aug. 21st 2001 (very interesting conversation)

---------------------------------------
1)


CONTRACTS

ARMY

Parsons Delaware Inc., Pasadena, Calif. (DTRA01-01-D-0010); Bechtel
National Inc., San Francisco, Calif. (DTRA01-01-D-0011); Washington
Group International Inc., International Alliances, Cleveland, Ohio
(DTRA01-01-D-0012); Raytheon Technical Services Co., Reston, Va.
(DTRA01-01-D-0013); and Brown & Root Services, Division of Haliburton
International Inc., Arlington, Va. (DTRA01-01-D-0014), are together
being awarded an estimated $5,000,000,000 indefinite-
delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. An appropriation number and
dollar value will be issued with each delivery order. The objective
of this contract is to provide safe, secure, efficient and accurate
planning, organizing, management, integration, reporting, operations,
maintenance, logistics, construction and eradication support
resources to accomplish the elimination of solid/liquid-fueled
rockets and air-breathing weapons, bombers, submarines and other
platforms, disposal of the residual products and by-products of such
systems, elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) support
infrastructure and production facilities to include chemical and
biological capabilities, storage and accounting for sensitive items
of these systems and their warheads which are to be retained, non-
proliferation of WMD expertise and sponsorship of collaborative
efforts between WMD development experts and their respective
laboratory and research facilities and design, estimation,
construction, and demolition of horizontal (e.g., trenching, roads
and railroads) and vertical (e.g., buildings, bunkers, and towers)
structures. Work for Parsons Delaware Inc. will be performed in the
former Soviet Union (90%) and Fairfax, Va. (10%); for Bechtel
National Inc. in the former Soviet Union (90%) and McLean, Va. (10%);
for Washington Group International Inc. in the former Soviet Union
(90%) and Cleveland, Ohio (10%); for Raytheon Technical Services Co.
in the former Soviet Union (90%) and Reston, Va. (10%); and for Brown
& Root Services in the former Soviet Union (90%) and Arlington, Va.
(10%). Completion is expected by Sept. 6, 2006. There were 72 bids
solicited o­n April 4, 2001, and six bids were received. The Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, Fort Belvoir, Va., is the contracting
agency.

Raytheon Technical Services Co., Reston, Va., is being awarded a
$3,698,959 increment of a $7,397,918 cost-plus-award-fee/award-term
contract with a cumulative total of $29,798,155, for support services
to operate and maintain a semi-automated system to monitor vehicles
and cargo loads exiting from the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in
Russia. The contractor will provide logistics, maintenance, food
preparation, health care and linguistic support for Strategic Army
Reductions Treaty inspection activities at a remote site located in
Votkinsk, Russia. Work will be performed in Russia (70%), Reston, Va.
(20%), and Germany (10%), and completion is expected by Jan. 8, 2010.
There was an announcement o­n the World Wide Web o­n May 18, 2001, and
o­ne bid was received. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Fort
Belvoir, Va., is the contracting activity (DTRA01-01-C-0059).

NAVY

BAE Systems Applied Technologies Inc., Rockville, Md., is being
awarded a $5,673,048 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide
engineering and technical services in support of the NATO Seasparrow
Surface Missile System, Target Acquisition System, MK48 Guided
Missile Vertical Launching System and the Evolved Seasparrow Missile
and associated improvements thereto. The contract contains options
which, if exercised, would bring the total cumulative contract value
to $36,263,762. Work will be performed in Arlington, Va. (70%);
Silver Spring, Md. (20%); and Norfolk, Va. (10%), and is expected to
be completed by January 2007. Contract funds in the amount of
$497,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This
contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Sea Systems
Command, Washington Navy Yard, D.C., is the contracting activity
(N00024-01-C-5402).

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/c09072001_ct412-01.html

----------------------------

2)


DIA Hopes to Grow Anthrax Variant to Test Vaccine

The Defense Intelligence Agency hopes to grow a Russian- engineered
variant of anthrax to test the effectiveness of the vaccine given to
U.S. troops. A 1997 medical journal reported that Russia might have
developed a modified anthrax strain.

Concerned about its possible use as a biological weapon, DIA
officials requested a sample from Russia, but to date have received
none, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in a Sept. 4 press
briefing. DIA earlier this year started to look into the coordination
and approvals needed to develop the strain and test the vaccine, she
said.

Clarke stressed no scientific work has been done so far in developing
this strain and that the proposed work, codenamed Project Jefferson,
would be in compliance with the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6,
2001http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/n09062001_200109061.html

-----------------------------------------

3)


Iraq Q:A: ( out of context)Q: I'm Tom Gjelton with NPR. Can you say
what you see going o­n between Syria and Iraq in terms of possible
security cooperation? And slightly larger than that, in the event of
a Middle East war, what do you see as sort of the alignment of Arab
states there right now and the likelihood that they would be able to
work together?

Rodman: Well, I don't want to talk about a Middle East war. It's
something I think about, but I'd rather not -- I don't think we
should be talking about it. It is a dangerous situation in the region
now, for obvious reasons. And the very fact that you would ask a
question like that is a symptom of, you know, how precarious things
are.

The Syrian-Iraqi relationship is intriguing. There's a rivalry that
goes back many decades, yet in the present environment they seem to
have common ground in trying to complicate life for the United States
and for Israel. So there's a trend toward radicalization. I
shouldn't -- well, I wouldn't -- maybe that's overstating it. But it
has its practical implications. There's a pipeline which, you know,
the Syrians made some promises to Secretary Powell about, something
we're looking at very closely.

I don't know what -- I mean, I think there is a danger of conflict in
the Middle East that is disturbing, but I don't want to speculate. I
don't want to fuel speculation about what it might look like. I think
we have friends in the Arab world, I think, whose relationship with
us is solid. There are plenty of these friends of ours in the Arab
world who understand the risks that you're discussing.

So I think we're a long way away from, you know, the kind of
cataclysm that you're asking about, precisely because I think a lot
of mature folks out there understand why it's necessary to avoid
that. So let me just try to steer away in the opposite direction and
say, you know, people are conscious of it, and for that reason I'm
confident that wiser heads, cooler heads, can prevail and not let
things slide further down the road to that kind of a conflict.

  Barbara Starr -- Rodman:( if you read the whole article Rodman
deliberately and openly wont discuss anything having to do with Iraq).

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2001/t08222001_t0821asd.html

other headline o­n
Iraq
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2001/n08212001_200108212.html

Mama Mia, What a Con!
How the Italians — perhaps with U.S. neocon help — suckered the Brits into believing and promoting the African-uranium fable

By: Dennis Hans - 07/19/03

 

Did neonconservative elements in U.S. intelligence, perhaps at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), use the Italian military intelligence agency, known as SISMI, to con British intelligence into believing what most U.S. experts considered far-fetched at best — that Iraq sought uranium from Africa for use in a nuclear weapons program? Is that the “back story” behind this discredited assertion — “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — in the Brits’ ballyhooed September 2002 dossier, which Bush cited in his 2003 State of the Union address? 

At this point, there is substantial circumstantial evidence against Italy’s SISMI, less so for a U.S. role in the plot — if a plot is what it is. It strains credulity that SISMI would, on its own, con the Brits into believing and hyping the uranium allegations. But one thing this strange, complex story has revealed time and again is that credulity-straining things happen all the time. 

So with that caveat out of the way, we turn to our attempt at a coherent narrative of this convoluted tale. 

The Brits Received “Summaries,” Not Forgeries 

British officials vehemently deny that they knew anything about the forged Iraq-Niger correspondence and “memorandum of agreement” for the sale of 500 tons of uranium oxide when they published their September dossier. They insist that their assertion was based on other evidence that their government had obtained from at least two western (but non-U.S.) intelligence services. 

I believe the Brits. Their position is supported by an important story in the March 22 Washington Post (http://commondreams.org/headlines03/0322-04.htm).Paraphrasing an official of the U.N. shortly after that body’s International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the forgeries, the Post reported that “a Niger diplomat turned the letters over to Italian intelligence, which provided summaries of the information to Washington and London.” 

The key word is “summaries.” 

On July 9, a Reuters dispatch (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=13157652&method=full&siteid=50143) made the same basic point:: “Italy's intelligence service circulated reports about the Niger documents — not the documents themselves — to other Western intelligence services in early 2002, and that was apparently how the British and U.S. intelligence services learned of them, U.S. government sources said.” 

Note the carefully worded Italian denial, issued July 13 (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/07/13/sprj.irq..italy.uranium.ap/index.html): 

“The news reported by various information organizations, national and foreign, concerning Italy's claimed transmission to other intelligence organizations of documents of Niger or Iraqi origin, conveying evidence relative to uranium transactions between Niger and Iraq are without any foundation.” 

The key phrase in the non-denial denial is “documents of Niger or Iraqi origin.” What SISMI transmitted were of ITALIAN origin — they were SISMI “summaries” based (how loosely we don’t know) on the info in the actual documents. 

Why the Brits Believed 

The Brits found the allegations in the “summaries” credible BECAUSE they never received the actual documents. If the efforts of the Iraqis to acquire uranium in Africa are described in a report provided by a trusted ally that was not at all eager to attack Iraq, and if the reader of that report is unaware the allegations are based on obvious forgeries, he might well be inclined to believe the allegations. He would not have his guard up while reading the summaries/report, and unless someone provided a darn good reason for skepticism, he would likely consider the Iraqis guilty until proven innocent. He would not be inclined to search for evidence that would clear the Iraqis. 

SISMI went out of its way to lend credibility to the summaries/report by flattering the Brits and playing up what we might call Italy’s own “special relationship” with Britain: They were two European allies who, unlike the Bush administration cowboys chomping at the bit, did not believe in early 2002 that war was the only solution to Iraq. SISMI also boxed the Brits by insisting they not compare intelligence notes with the Yanks. British officials concede as much, without specific reference to SISMI, in an important article by Richard Norton-Taylor in the July 14 Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,997704,00.html): 

“British intelligence sources said yesterday that MI6 had separate information [distinct from the forgeries] to back the claim. MI6 was provided the information by a third party which insisted that neither the source nor the intelligence could be passed on. . . . Whitehall officials suggested yesterday that the claims came from a ‘close ally’ but one which did not want Britain to give it to the US as a further pretext for war.” 

That sound you hear is SISMI playing MI6 like a violin. But who composed the tune? SISMI? Berlusconi? An ally in the western hemisphere? Who wanted the Brits to believe in a uranium crock? 

Is Italian “Intelligence” Idiotic or Insidious? 

The actual forged documents have now appeared in the Italian and U.S. media (view them via this link: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/uranium030716flaweddocs.html). As ABC’s Brian Ross reported July 16, “Among the many glaring errors evident in the documents . . . are the use of obsolete letterheads, incompatible dates and poorly forged signatures.” 

So what are the chances SISMI’s forensic investigators were fooled by this rubbish? Slim. It strains credulity to think SISMI could not figure out they were dealing with obvious forgeries (assuming SISMI didn’t create them itself), but it’s certainly possible. 

If SISMI considered them geniune, why didn’t they include photocopies along with the summaries/report it passed on to the Brits and others? Wouldn’t that help a recipient agency conduct their own investigation to confirm or refute the allegations in the “summaries”? 

If SISMI was cynically trying to persuade the Brits of an African Connection that SISMI knew or highly suspected was bogus, the smart thing for SISMI to have done is lock up those laughable letters and distribute instead neatly typed “summaries” that wouldn’t have those “glaring errors.” Had SISMI given MI6 the actual documents, it probably would have taken the Brits the same two hours it took the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to conclude they were forgeries. 

Is SISMI a mostly rightwing hotbed in a rightwing government? A source within SISMI told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (as paraphrased July 16 by the Associated Press) that “the Italian Foreign Ministry had raised strong objections about the information provided by Italian intelligence.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2916088,00.html) 

Sounds just like the infighting among the Bush administration, where the cool, competent and powerless folks in the State Department’s intelligence bureau, whose judgments look darn good in hindsight, have been repeatedly stunned by the incredible nonsense passed off as truth by the superhawk neoconservatives at the Pentagon’s OSP. 

Even if turns out that the SISMI leadership is both hawkish and sneaky, and indeed passed on to the Brits allegations it new were groundless, it’s hard to believe that SISMI would do this on its own initiative. 

The Brits’ and Yanks’ Mysterious “Other” Sources 

So far, our focus has been on one British source, SISMI. Rest assured, SISMI was the Brits’ primary source. But we know from numerous comments by named an unnamed Brit officials that they had at least one other foreign intelligence source. It could be an agency from another country (some recent speculation centers on France), or it may simply be a different branch of Italian intelligence. Whatever the case, this other source or sources seems to have provided the merest of scraps — “fragmentary” stuff similar or identical to some odds and ends the sane branches of U.S. intelligence place little stock in. 

In the weeks and months after the Niger Connection fell apart on March 7, 2003, various U.S. officials aluded to untainted evidence in our possession implicating Iraq in efforts to buy uranium from an African nation other than Niger. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) asked the Bush administration what this evidence was, and an official State Department response acknowledged that our source was a “second Western European government” (i.e., other than the British) that had “based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited” (http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16155). According to a “senior intelligence official” quoted in the July 8 Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23777-2003Jul7?language=printer), 

“We both [the U.S. and Brits] had one source reporting through some liaison service which said, ‘Look what we found.’ There were other [intelligence] reporting streams, but it may be that all streams are traced to the same source.” 

The CIA Flubs a Chance to Clue in the Brits 

In early September the CIA did warn the Brits about including the uranium allegation in their soon-to-be-published dossier. But as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw commented July 12, “the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence” (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&e=5&u=/afp/20030712/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_britain_us_africa_030712131522). 

So the Brits left it in, believing erroneously that they had secret evidence not privy to the Yanks! What the Brits didn’t know is that their trusty friends in SISMI provided summaries/reports to the Yanks, too. Nor did the Brits know that the U.S. had long ago conducted three separate investigations into the allegations that flowed from the forged documents, and each concluded that, for a variety of reasons, there was virtually no chance they were true. But because the CIA did not tell the Brits in early September what it new and what it had investigated and discounted, the Brits didn’t get a chance for a lightbulb moment. You know, the light switches on and the MI6 agent says, “That sounds amazingly like the allegations that we’ve been thinking are true, but unlike you Yanks, we didn’t check them out. We basically just took the word of our secret source. Please, CIA friend, tell me more.” 

This “failure to communicate” is all the more astounding when one considers that a CIA officer sits on the Brits’ Joint Intelligence Committee. He or she doesn’t have full privileges, but there really is a “special relationship” between Brit and Yank spooks. Why the CIA official or officials chose not to explain to the Brits WHY they should delete the uranium reference is a matter for Congress to investigate. 

And what to make of CIA director George Tenet? It’s not good to have at the top someone who’s (1) a coward and (2) easily cajoled by his smooth-talking, back-slapping pal, George W. Bush. From a professional standpoint, that’s two strikes against Tenet. Sticking strictly to uranium, his agency did ask the Brits — however ineffectively and non-specifically — to not mention it in the dossier. And a few weeks later he got a similar line stricken from Bush’s October 7 address in Cincinnati. But he also breathed life into the allegations by mentioning it, albeit with caveats, in the classified National Intelligence Estimate of October — a document put out mainly to placate Democrats who wanted more to go on than administration pronouncements. 

Those passages were not read in a vacuum. They were read by members of Congress who shortly before had first learned about the Uranium Connection from a trusted ally asserting in a white paper that “there is intelligence” of such a Connection. That nuclear double-shot helped to persuade fence-sitters to give Bush a green light to wage war. 

The net effect of Tenet’s conflicting actions on the Uranium Connection was to give some legitimacy to allegations that deserved almost none. A less cowardly director would have driven a stake into the Connection, but such a director would never have been hired by Bush. 

Questions that Require Answers 

Determining the who, when, how and why of the preparation of these summaries — and whether “summaries” is a good description of what SISMI distributed — will go a long way toward determining if the Brits believed these materials or merely pretended to. 

Consider “who?” The summaries presumably were prepared by SISMI agents. Did they prepare them on their own? Did any non-Italians collaborate? If so, who? What was the nature of the collaboration? 

Consider “why?” Was the purpose of the summaries to accurately reflect the contents of the documents or to hype and distort them? At any point in their preparation phase did the preparers learn or suspect that the allegations were false and the documents fake? 

Consider “when?” The actual documents were acquired by Italian intelligence in the late in 2001. Not till months later did the Italians distribute the summaries. After Wilson revealed in the New York Times that he conducted his Niger investigation in “late February 2002,” the British Foreign Office said that it was some time after that that the Brits received information on Iraq’s pursuit of African uranium from their sources. (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=422729). If that British info is correct, why the delay? Why not get the documents or summaries into British, U.S. or, God forbid, IAEA hands IMMEDIATELY? 

It’s not clear when the U.S. received its copy of SISMI’s “summaries.” 

As soon as we did, did we alert our Italian ally that it was spreading bad information so that SISMI could alert the other recipients? 

Apparently not. Of course, there wouldn’t be any need to do so if spreading lies was the intent and we were in on the scheme. 

Bob Woodward reported in the March 23, 2003 Washington Post that, in 
very early 2002, Bush “signed a secret intelligence order authorizing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive program to remove Hussein” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12215-2003Mar22?language=printer). If that covert campaign was anything like past ones to topple a foreign government, a significant component would be disinformation. Did Bush authorize the intelligence community to launch an overseas disinformation campaign? Was the writing and distribution of the “summaries” part of that effort? Is this why there was such little concern, aside from career professionals at the CIA, about duping the Brits? 

Did the summarizers broaden Iraq’s potential list of suppliers to include all four uranium-producing nations in Africa — perhaps to give the allegations a longer life by making them more difficult to speedily refute? 

The U.S. Congress needs to put the right officials under oath and pose tough questions to determine if the Bush team used the Brits to deceive America about the nuclear threat from Iraq. The British Parliament needs to determine if British intelligence were witting or unwitting participants. The Italian Parliament needs to determine if their intelligence agents produced credible “summaries” or hyped and distorted ones; and if the latter is the case, did they do so on their own or in cahoots with elements of U.S. intelligence? 

For intelligence officials in three countries, it could be a long, hot 
summer.

 

Dennis Hans is a single white male who has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg. He enjoys dancing, romantic walks on moonlit beaches, and exposing Bush administration deceit. If you’re a lovely non-smoking lady with a delightful sense of humor and some dirt on Powell or Cheney, Dashing Den would love to hear from you at  HANS_D@...

You can read his stunning essay “Lying Us Into War: Exposing Bush and His ‘Techniques of Deceit’” — published several weeks before the start of the recent war — at http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/pubarchive.php?haney+1557 

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What is to be Done with the CIA?

A History of Flawed Intelligence

By MEL GOODMAN

One week after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the press corps, "This isn't Pearl Harbor." No, it was worse. Sixty years ago, the United States did not have a director of central intelligence or thirteen intelligence agencies or a combined intelligence budget of more than $30 billion to provide early warning of enemy attack.

There is another significant and telling difference between Pearl Harbor and September 11. Less than two weeks after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a high-level military and civilian commission to determine the causes of the intelligence failure. Following the September attacks, however, President Bush, CIA director George Tenet, and the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees were adamantly opposed to any investigation or postmortem. The president's failure to appoint a statutory inspector general at the CIA from January 2001 to April 2002 deprived the agency of the one individual who could have started an investigation regardless of the director's opposition. Overall, the unwillingness to begin a congressional inquiry for nearly eight months increased the suspicion that indicators of an attack had gone unheeded.

The eventual Senate and House intelligence committee investigation of the September 11 failure, which began in June 2002, was mishandled from the beginning. The original staff director for the investigation, former CIA inspector general Britt Snider, had the stature and experience for the job, but he was soon pushed out by former Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Shelby (R-GA), a staunch critic of CIA Director Tenet but never an advocate for reform of the intelligence community. The staff itself is too small and inexperienced to do the job seriously. The August 2002 decision of the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees to order an aggressive FBI investigation of the joint committee, ostensibly to uncover leaks of classified information, marked a blatant violation of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. The move was designed to placate the Bush administration, which has consistently established roadblocks to an independent investigation of the intelligence community.

Nevertheless, the preliminary report of the joint intelligence committee has done an excellent job of ferreting out evidence documenting the failures at the CIA and the FBI. The report describes a director of central intelligence who declared a war on terrorism in 1998 but allocated no additional funding or personnel to the task force on terrorism; an intelligence community that never catalogued information on the use of airplanes as weapons; and a CIA that refused to acknowledge the possibility of weaponizing commercial aircraft for terrorism until two months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Two days after the report was published, the Bush administration reversed itself and endorsed the creation of a separate, independent investigation to study the intelligence failure.....

Continues @

http://www.counterpunch.org/goodman07192003.html

peace,

Tom

Bush’s hatchet man: two biographies of Karl Rove

Bush’s Brain and Boy Genius

By Joanne Laurier
19 July 2003

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential by James Moore and Wayne Slater; Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid and Carl M. Cannon

Karl Rove, chief political advisor to George W Bush, is the subject of two recently published books by veteran journalists.

Bush’s Brain How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential was authored by television correspondent James Moore and Wayne Slater, Austin, Texas, bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.

Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush was penned by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid and Carl M. Cannon. Dubose, formerly an editor for the Texas Observer and The Austin Chronicle, co-authored Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. Reid is a novelist and magazine journalist, and Cannon is the White House correspondent for the National Journal.

Considering the subservient role the media has played in relation to the Bush administration, it is no surprise that neither volume deals with the real social and political significance of figures like Rove, one of the most dismal representatives of the political underworld.

Bush’s Brain and Boy Genius provide glimpses into Rove’s machinations, but manage to stay within definite boundaries and leave the political status quo essentially unquestioned. They gloss over, for example, critical events relating to the ascension of Bush to the presidency. Neither work seriously treats the 2000 presidential election result as a political hijacking, organized by a right-wing cabal that included Rove.

Although much of the two books’ material overlaps, Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush, as the title suggests, adopts a less critical attitude and in general is a less substantive work.

Both volumes are muckraking accounts of Rove’s career, but despite their varying levels of criticism, the journalist/authors cannot help but express admiration for him. At various moments, it becomes clear that the authors measure Rove by the standards of contemporary American culture: Rove is a success, a “winner” and not a “loser,” no matter how unattractive he is as a personality and political type.

Bush’s Brain begins by claiming that Rove is “something grander” than a presidential advisor. “His influence marks a transcendent moment in American politics: the rise of an unelected consultant to a position of unprecedented power,” which may “raise” constitutional questions. The book’s authors describe Rove as the “co-president of the United States.” This is a remarkable assertion, but even more remarkable is the failure of the authors to grasp that the rise of an unelected consultant takes place as the consequence of the rise of an unelected president! Rove’s prominence is one expression of the quasi-Bonapartist character of the Bush administration.

“Cabinet appointments were vetted through him [Rove], judicial nominations crossed his desk, as did the details of a proposed energy bill, administration policy on stem-cell research, steel tariffs, and health care policy. Nearly every speech was shown to Rove before it was delivered,” asserts Boy Genius.

This wide portfolio is all the more significant because Rove seems to have little interest in the substance of policy, outside of its impact on maintaining political office. He rose through the ranks of the Republican Party as a career political operative, concerned mainly with the process of manipulating public opinion to produce a desired electoral result.

While a hard-core right-winger, Rove is not a product of the Christian fundamentalists, the neo-conservatives, the Southern racists or other factions of the contemporary far right. He comes from a slightly earlier, but equally foul, political tradition—the McCarthyite red-baiter.

Born in Denver in 1950, Rove grew up in Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Beginning his political career as a die-hard Nixonite (from age 9), Rove “escaped the Vietnam draft, but loathed everything those anti-war protesters on TV stood for,” according to Boy Genius. “I came from a relatively conservative state, Utah, and it was hard to sympathize with all those Commies,” proclaimed Rove.

After dropping out of college, Rove’s first foray into dirty tricks campaigning was in Illinois in 1970. Gaining entry into the office of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer, Rove stole campaign stationery and printed false invitations to Dixon’s campaign headquarters, promising “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time.” They were distributed in places such as homeless shelters. In 1973, while chairman of the College Republicans, Rove first hooked up with George Bush the elder, who was then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, beginning his role as a Bush family retainer.

Rove went to Texas in 1977 to work for a Bush Political Action Committee (PAC) run by James Baker. At the time of Rove’s arrival, U.S. senator John Tower was the only Republican holding statewide office. When Rove left in 2001 to serve as a senior adviser to President Bush, all 29 statewide elected offices were held by Republicans, and both U.S. Senate seats were occupied by Rove clients, what Bush’s Brain calls “a shiny roster of winners.” Both books present this phenomenon as the product of Rove’s ingenious handiwork. It would be more accurate to say that when Rove arrived in Texas, only one statewide Republican politician was unscrupulous enough to hire him—by the time he left, they all were.

Authors Moore and Slater of Bush’s Brain state that “the Texas political landscape was spotted with the blood of those who had been taken down by Karl Rove.” Despite this awestruck attitude, however, Rove’s track record is hardly one of unbroken success: he helped run Bush the elder’s abortive 1980 presidential campaign as well as Phil Gramm’s presidential campaign debacle in 1996.

What neither Boy Genius nor Bush’s Brain choose to recognize is that Rove was a consequence, not the cause, of a process that saw a wholesale movement throughout the South of conservative white Democratic Party politicians into the Republican Party. A pivotal moment of this shift, part of the movement to the right by the entire political establishment, came in 1983 when Gramm, then a Democrat, quit Congress to run again for his seat as a Republican. He then became one of Rove’s major clients.

To help his clients win office, Rove conducted “whisper wars”—a genteel way of saying slander campaigns—against political opponents. Whispers of homosexuality in the Texas state government purportedly undermined the gubernatorial campaign of incumbent Ann Richards in her unsuccessful 1994 fight against Rove’s client George W Bush. The same tactic was used in the 2000 GOP primary against John McCain. Rumors were circulated that McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, had become mentally unhinged as a result of his imprisonment.

Although Bush was Rove’s premier asset—“the keys to the kingdom”—the latter maintained a list of private business clients who paid for his political advice. Among them was tobacco giant Philip Morris, which hired Rove to provide “political intelligence.” Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Angolan anti-communist guerrilla leader and mass murderer Jonas Savimbi also paid Rove to lobby for them.

Philip Morris supported tort reform, the campaign by big business to curb liability from lawsuits involving injury, illness or death. Texas was one of the first states to sue the tobacco companies for recovery of Medicaid costs for treatment of tobacco-related illnesses. At the time, Rove shamelessly claimed: “My job advising Philip Morris has nothing to do with my working for the governor.”

By 1997, Bush was in the early stages of emerging as a potential presidential candidate. In Texas, he appointed a committee to conduct statewide hearings, dubbed “the tax road show.” According to Bush’s Brain, Bush’s tax plan was copied directly from Ronald Reagan’s sweeping tax proposals in the 1980s. His tax committee included Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. “These were Karl Rove’s guys, the big-money guys, and the financial foundation of the national GOP.... [O]nce Bush decided to move forward on a plan to cut taxes, the voices shaping it sounded remarkably as if they all belonged to Rove,” argue the authors of Bush’s Brain.

The 2000 presidential election campaign is what supposedly established Rove’s standing as a political genius. The two books fail to mention or gloss over the fact that only days before the November balloting Rove predicted a landslide victory for Bush, with the Republican candidate capturing 320 votes in the Electoral College, indicating that the master strategist completely misread the actual shifts in public opinion. In fact, Gore won the popular vote by a margin of more than 540,000, and the Electoral College vote was the closest in more than a century.

Bush’s eventual victory was only due to the machinations of the Republican Party on election night and in Florida in the subsequent weeks, a conspiracy in which Rove was centrally involved, culminating in the anti-democratic ruling by the US Supreme Court that shut down vote-counting.

The events of election night are worth recalling briefly. Around 8 p.m., the major television networks, based on information provided by the generally reliable Voter News Service, projected Vice President Al Gore the victor in Florida. Such an outcome spelled likely defeat for Bush. As Boy Genius reports, the projection “stunned and horrified” Rove. In an unprecedented move, he “rushed to get himself on the air” (national television) where he admonished the networks for “prematurely” calling Florida. In another unprecedented action, Bush held an unscheduled press conference in which he repeated this message. The purpose of these desperate efforts was not primarily to appeal to last-minute voters, as Boy Genius suggests, but to put pressure on the television networks to rescind their projection, which they all subsequently did.

At around 2 a.m., Fox News, whose decision desk was headed by Bush’s first cousin John Ellis, unilaterally declared Florida and thus the national election for the Texas governor, a call then taken up by the rest of the networks. This projection turned out to be false, and the networks were eventually obliged to term the Florida race “too close to call,” but the psychological edge provided by their having declared Bush the victor in the presidential election had an undoubted and enduring impact on public opinion.

The authors of Bush’s Brain produce material that underscores the fact that for the first time in modern history a president attained office through outright criminality. Documents released by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) some 19 months after the election reveal that the Bush team flew an estimated 250 operatives to Florida to disrupt the vote recount. Dubbed the “Brooks Brothers Riots” (after the upscale clothing worn by the disrupters), a successful effort was organized to stop the recount in Miami-Dade county of the estimated 10,000 “undervotes”—ballots for which no presidential choice had been registered by the original machine count.

The well-heeled “rioters” banged and kicked on the doors and windows of the office where the canvassing board was counting the ballots and physically assaulted or threatened a number of Democratic Party representatives on the scene. A fleet of corporate jets, including planes owned by Enron chairman Lay, a key Bush supporter, and Halliburton, the energy services firm where Vice President Dick Cheney had served as CEO, transported the hooligans.

“Karl Rove, working with James A. Baker III, put it all together,” state the authors of Bush’s Brain, adding, “Rove always worked best while hiding behind the curtain.”

The authors of both Bush’s Brain and Boy Genius express a certain admiration for what they consider to be Rove’s skills in making Bush “presidential”—covering up his obvious intellectual inadequacy and his inability to express himself without a script. Bush’s Brain describes Bush as “remarkably apolitical.” It mentions a meeting at the White House with Bush, media chief Mark McKinnon and Rove. Bush pushes a button and four attendants in white jackets appear. “Yes sir, Mr. President. Is there something we can get you?” Bush dispatches the attendants for a glass of water and says to Rove: “Now that’s power!”

Boy Genius ends with a brief reference to the 2002 midterm elections.

“One can say Rove was a superb talent scout and recruiter of candidates,” proclaim the authors. “George W. Bush did not come north from Texas to be thought of as a loser. Neither did his personal ‘boy genius.’ And as soon as the votes were counted in November 2002, the planning began anew for 2004 and the contest that will truly determine the Bush-Rove legacy,” write the authors in the epilogue, revealing themselves to be more admirers than critics of Rove’s methods.

The authors of Bush’s Brain also end their work by waxing ecstatic about Bush’s standing after the midterm elections and during the build-up for war against Iraq: “The president was confident. The public believed [in the case for war against Iraq]. And the Democrats cowered... Bush was almost mythological, descending from the sky in the world’s command center called Air Force One, possessed of a relentless level of approval from the people who were enduring hard times caused, in part, by his leadership. In the closing days [of the midterm elections], it was obvious voters were deciding to give the president what he wanted: congressional support for Republicans and a mandate to clear out Saddam.”

The notion that Bush is unchallengeable, a quasi-mythical being, is patently absurd and, more than anything, demonstrates the political outlook of these supposed critics. The temporary success of the Bush-Rove team has less to do with their innate strength than with the historic collapse of liberalism and the prostration of the Democratic Party. The current crisis arising from the exposure of Bush administration lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction,” whatever its immediate outcome, demonstrates the fundamentally narrow social base of the present regime and its inherent political weakness.

The authors of Bush’s Brain contend that “Rove represents a new species of advisor,” a “product of the permanent campaign, the co-president, whose relationship with Bush, and his faithful guidance, have put him at the heart of power in a manner unknown to previous political consultants and U.S. electoral history.” But Rove must be placed within the appropriate political context—the takeover of the Republican Party by semi-fascist elements from the Christian right. He represents the rise of political gangsterism in the Republican Party, and his current political “success” is the product of the alliance of these forces with the Christian fundamentalists, for which he has been a leading facilitator.

In general, the authors elevate Rove’s role at the expense of other members of the Bush administration, such as Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Both books tend to exaggerate his significance in order to avoid a more probing analysis of the present government and the political and social crisis in America.

Nonetheless, the ascent of this right-wing mediocrity, whose only apparent skill is manipulation and deceit, to the highest levels of power is telling. It is one expression of the decay of bourgeois democracy in the US and the degeneration of the ruling elite as a whole. In the final analysis, semi-criminal elements like Rove come out of the woodwork to attempt to rescue, by any means necessary, a fatally diseased American capitalism.

See Also:
Bush documentary: an “intimate” portrait of an empty vessel
[9 December 2002]
The US election: Anatomy of a right-wing riot—the Republican mob attack in Miami-Dade
[25 November 2000]
The Bush campaign and the rise of the political underworld
[15 November 2000]

From: cosmicdot <no_reply@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [corporatesleuth] Enron, Iraq, Cheney and the California Energy
Swindle
To: corporatesleuth@yahoogroups.com

Enron, Iraq, Cheney and the California Energy Swindle


"In April of 2001, Ken Lay handed Dick Cheney a two-page memorandum
recommending national energy policy changes. The memo contained
Enron's positions on specific, rather technical issues, which were
presented as a "fix" for the California crisis. (Enron brazenly
advised the administration not to place price caps on energy, which
would be precisely the request California officials made to the
President, and which the President and the Vice President would just
as brazenly deny until public pressure forced them to capitulate.)
According to a special report prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman, over
seventeen energy policies recommended by Enron made their way into
the official White House National Energy Policy report.

Congress awoke from its somnambulism, having become alarmed at
Enron's close association with the Bush administration. Congressional
committees asked Dick Cheney for the names of those who advised him
and the reports he relied upon in drafting the nation's energy
policy. Cheney bluntly and adamantly refused to reveal those facts.
After months of standoff, the General Accounting Office (GAO) filed a
suit against the Vice President in an effort to obtain the requested
information. The White House then developed a fascinating legal
strategy that helped them triumph over the legislative branch."

http://www.yuricareport.com/PoliticalAnalysis/FraudinWhiteHouse.htm

Click here to return to the browser-optimized version of this page.

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&s=dreyfuss

More Missing Intelligence

by ROBERT DREYFUSS

[from the July 7, 2003 issue]

As the Pentagon scours Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to Al Qaeda, it's increasingly obvious that the Bush Administration either distorted or deliberately exaggerated the intelligence used to justify the war against Iraq. But an even bigger intelligence scandal is waiting in the wings: the fact that members of the Administration failed to produce an intelligence evaluation of what Iraq might look like after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Instead, they ignored fears expressed by analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department who predicted that postwar Iraq would be chaotic, violent and ungovernable, and that Iraqis would greet the occupying armies with firearms, not flowers.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it turns out that the same people are responsible for both. 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 [the Office of Special Plans] 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. The country is engulfed in economic and political chaos, armed resistance is growing among the Sunni Muslims in central Iraq, and the powerful and largely hostile Shiite clergy in the south has barely begun to flex its muscles. Not only that, but Iraq watchers report that former Baath Party members are coalescing into nascent political formations, leading armed resistance to the occupation, and that they could emerge as either a strong political party or an underground terrorist group.

Astonishingly, the Bush Administration did not even bother to prepare and internally publish an intelligence estimate about postwar Iraq. (An "estimate," in intelligence jargon, is a formal evaluation produced after sifting, sorting and analyzing various bits and pieces of raw intelligence. So-called National Intelligence Estimates are produced by a unit that reports immediately to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.) "Back in the old days, there would have been an estimate," says Raymond McGovern, the twenty-seven-year CIA warrior who formed Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity this past January. "In their arrogance, they didn't worry about it."

Other sources concur. "There was no intelligence estimate done, and there weren't a lot of questions being asked," says Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst with the Center for International Policy. "And I know for a fact that at CIA and NESA [the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs], none of them thought that postwar Iraq would be governable." Goodman says that CIA and DIA experts on Iraq were not called in by the Pentagon, and no intelligence roundtables were held to evaluate the situation. Most of the intelligence about how easily the INC and its allies could assume power in Iraq was coming from the INC itself, says a former State Department official. "And I know for a fact that when the subject came up, intelligence officers were extraordinarily skeptical of the exiles' information."

On the eve of the invasion, there was something akin to panic at the Norfolk,Virginia-based US Joint Forces Command, which was responsible for supporting the Pentagon's Iraq task force, then headed by retired Gen. Jay Garner. "They were scared shitless," says a former US official who was in close contact with the command. "They were making it up as they went along." He adds, "There was a great deal of ignorance. They didn't know the names of the [Iraqi] tribes, much less how they relate to each other. They didn't have the expertise, and they didn't have enough time to assemble the expertise."

Such expertise would have allowed the Army to foresee that once Saddam was eliminated, Iranian-backed Shiite forces in southern Iraq, with great influence over the 60 percent of Iraqis who are Shiite, would instantly emerge as a powerful claimant to power. Instead of leading to the democracy envisioned by Bush, the war in Iraq could result in a Shiite-dominated fundamentalist regime, a prospect that is starting to seem the most likely. Not the kind of victory Bush wants to take to the US electorate in 2004.

At a June forum on Iraq at the American Enterprise Institute, Kenneth Katzman, the Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, made a chilling prediction of how the crisis in Iraq will continue to unfold, to the discomfort of his AEI hosts. The Shiite forces in southern Iraq, he said, are content for now to let the Sunni-led guerrillas harass and weaken US troops. "The Shiites hope that Sunni violence in central Iraq will force the United States out, and then the Shiites will move in and pick up the pieces," he said. Despite discord and infighting among the Shiites, Katzman said, most of the Shiite leadership is tied closely to the Iranian government and its ultraconservative clergy. For the rest of this year, he predicted, the US forces in Iraq will be unable to pacify the country or halt the violence, and by next year, as the election nears, there will be enormous political pressure for the United States to withdraw--or, in Washington-speak, to develop an "exit strategy." The question for Bush, according to Katzman, is, Does the United States have the political staying power to continue to sustain one or two casualties a day in October 2004?

That's a question that ought to disturb Karl Rove's sleep. And it might be a question that Democratic would-be opponents of the President ought to ponder. A massive failure of US intelligence has led to an emerging disaster in postwar Iraq. It's a true crisis, and one that could determine the fate of Bush's presidency. In Watergate, the refrain was: "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" Let me suggest a question for Bush, the know-nothing GOP standard-bearer in 2004: "What didn't the President know, and when didn't he know it?"

I believe that tying Neo-Con history to Trotsky and Rockefeller and Fabian
Socialism has helped a lot.
To see NeoCons as Disguised Commies may have been dismissed as "conspiracy
theory" a few months ago, but now it is given serious attention, causing
much embarrasment to both left and right.
You may consider it "tilting at windmills" to believe these traitors can be
embarrassed out of their positions of power, but from where I sit it looks
strikingly effective.



> Sean McBride wrote:
>
> On the subject of achievable and realistic political goals:  this is a
> perfect example.  Some progress has been made on taking down the neocons a
> notch or two, although they are still riding fairly high in the saddle.
> They are still well-ensconced in the offices of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
> Cheney, but maybe for not much longer.
>
> The efforts to expose their real agenda by a handful of determined
> writers, like Jim Lobe, Justin Raimondo, Seymour Hersh and Jude
> Wanniski, is having a major practical impact on the world.  They haven't
> been tilting at windmills.  They are fully engaged with reality, and are
> having a significant impact on it.
>
> This is why I prefer well-grounded conspiracy research to poorly grounded
> conspiracy theorizing.
>
>
>      ----- Original Message -----
>      From: The Webfairy
>      To: political-research
>      Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 9:38 PM
>      Subject: [political-research] Where is Iraq War Instigator,
>      Richard Perle?
>
>
>
>      http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamhughes56.html
>      Where is Iraq War Instigator, Richard Perle?
>      by William Hughes, Media Monitors Network, 07/15/03
>
>
>
>                    Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>                        ADVERTISEMENT
>                         [click here]
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> political-research-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

----- Original Message -----

From: The Webfairy

To: political-research

Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 9:38 PM

Subject: [political-research] Where is Iraq War Instigator, Richard Perle?

 

http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamhughes56.html
Where is Iraq War Instigator, Richard Perle?
by William Hughes, Media Monitors Network, 07/15/03

 

http://www.mediamonitors.net/williamhughes56.html
Where is Iraq War Instigator, Richard Perle?
by William Hughes, Media Monitors Network, 07/15/03

Perhaps we should take a break on looking for SaddamHussein, Osama bin Laden, William "Slots" Bennett, oreven James J. "Whitey" Bulger. For me, the key questiontoday is: Where is Richard Perle? Before the launching of
Iraq War No. 2, in March 20, 2003, Perle, America's Iago,regularly appeared on TV and cable TV programs, on radio,and in the print media, too. He repeated, ad infinitum, adnauseam, why it was so absolutely critical for the U.S. toimmediately invade Iraq. America was "at risk," he said,with that ubiquitous smirk on his mug. There wasn't amoment to lose. 
"Saddam has WMD," he told us, and he also "hates America"and poses a dire "threat to our security?" The shifty Perle, theMother of all Neo-cons, also predicted, like former DefenseDepartment official, Ken Adelman, that a U.S. invasion ofIraq would be a "cakewalk!" It will be "easy," he boasted.We would also be "exporting democracy" to the Iraqi people,who will "welcome us" with open arms "as liberators," heclaimed over and over again in similar words. Cakewalk! Easy!Exporting Democracy! Liberators! Sure!

Now, Perle is among the missing! The man with the sinister-looking scowl hasn't showed up on the Talking Head circuitssince about the time the U.S. occupation of Iraq began goingsour. Could he be hiding out in his beloved Israel, in a safehouse provided by Benjamin Netanyahu, a/k/a "Bend-the-TruthYahoo"? Or, are the War Hawks, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA)and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), telling him to keep a lowprofile by working temporarily as an extra on a Hollywoodmovie? Who knows?

It's a certainty that the idea of "regime change" for Baghdadwas first hustled in Zionist Israel. A 1996 paper concoctedby Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, entitled, "AClean Break: A New Strategy for Security the Realm," calledfor, inter alia, "the removal of Saddam Hussein and the
installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad."

The "realm" Perle, Feith and Wurmser were seeking to secure,however, wasn't America's, but Israel's! The study was intendedas a blueprint for the then-upcoming Likud-dominated govern-ment of Netanyahu. Feith now works for "our" DefenseDepartment, in a high policy post, while Wurmser is planted inthe State Department as a "special assistant." ("Examining the
Role of Israel-and its American Friends-in Promoting War onIraq," Allan C. Brownfeld, WRMEA, May, 2003).

For a while, Perle was a chief honcho of the Defense PolicyBoard, which advised Donald Rumsfeld and reported directlyto another shadowy figure, Deputy Defense Secretary, PaulWolfowitz. Perle was recently forced to resign from the toppost, but still remains on the Board. 
Perle is a notorious Israeli Firster. He is a member of theJewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA). He isalso a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,a hard line, right wing "think tank," that has slated Iran asAmerica's next war target. Perle advocates a  so-called"Pax Americana," a new American Empire, which promotesAmerica's world domination. Gee, I wonder if Israel willbenefit from that scheme, too?

Perle serves, also, on the Board of Advisors of the Foundationfor Defense of Democracy (FDD)-another right wing group,which is, of course, fanatically pro-Israel. He hangs out withSuper-Hawks, such as: Charles Krauthammer, William Kristoland Gary Bauer.

In fact, Perle is a master deceiver! American soldiers are nowdying in Iraq, 30 since President George W. Bush declared"mission accomplished" on board the USS Lincoln, on May 1,2003. As the body bags of our fallen heroes return to Dover,Delaware's Air Force base, loved ones have every right to blamePerle, and his ilk, for their losses.

The Iraq invasion was not a "cakewalk." Iraq doesn't haveWMD, nor did it have any ties to terrorists, as Perle tooted.And, the Iraqi people bitterly resent the U.S./British invasionand occupation of their country.

The unnecessary and immoral destruction by Coalition Forcesof Iraq's gas, water and electrical works, the bombing of theircities, pollution of their lands and rivers by toxic chemicals,leaking raw sewage and tons of depleted uranium, the deathand injuries to countless thousands of innocent civilians,and the mostly total collapse of its social, health, culturaland monetary systems, too, has been a human catastropheof the first magnitude. A country of 25.5 million souls hasbecome a living hell for no darn good reason. Opponents ofthe war have nothing to regret.

Democracy, Perle's rotten lies to the contrary, is not, likeCoke Cola, an exportable product. Americans troops nowface death around every corner in Iraq, as the situation onthe ground begins to resemble the guerrilla warfare conditionsof the British-occupied north of Ireland during the late 70s.The Iraqi war will only be over when the Iraqi people say so.The cost  to U.S. taxpayers could hit $1.6 trillion. And, thistotally uncalled for conflict has created even more enemiesfor America around the globe.

A final question: Will the slippery Perle, America's Iago,ever be forced to answer to the people for his incalculablewrongdoing?

William Hughes is a Baltimore attorney and the author of"Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order" (Authors Choice Press),which is available online. He contributed above article to MediaMonitors Network (MMN) from Maryland, USA
 

----- Original Message -----

From: mark urban

To: smcbride2@...

Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 5:07 AM

Subject: Re: [cia-drugs] Re: Fwd: BLOOD IN THE WATER--Watergate II---Mike Ruppert

Sean,

I think there is some merit to the idea that Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld may
fall on their swords long before the mentally challenged princeling is
forced to abdicate.

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail

I'm posting this as an example of the cynical use of every
form of propaganda and brainwashing technique known to man
in manipulating the United States into a war in the Middle
East against all reason.  Obviously Daniel Pipes does not
believe in Christian fundamentalist ideology.  He holds it
in complete contempt.  But he is delighted to use it as yet
another "weapon" in his armory.

Tim Howells

    =============================================

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1148

[Christian Zionism:] Israel's Best Weapon?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
July 15, 2003

Middle Easterners were widely puzzled in early 1994 when some
leading American politicians, including Sen. Jesse Helms
(R-N.C.) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), forwarded more
assertive, tougher positions vis-à-vis the Palestinians than
did the government of Israel. They were, for example, more
reluctant than Jerusalem to let U.S. funds go to the PLO and
they displayed more eagerness to move the U.S. embassy from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

One Arabic newspaper, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, captured the general
bafflement when it observed that Likud, Israel's more
nationalist party, had "lost in Israel but it still rules
supreme in Washington."

The same pattern is again visible these days, as Christian
leaders such as Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell and Richard Land
more vocally oppose the "road map" for Palestinian-Israeli
diplomacy than nearly all their Jewish counterparts. But this
bold Christian solidarity with Israel should not be surprising,
as it manifests a Christian form of Zionism that is nearly two
centuries old.

Christian support for the creation of a Jewish state originated
in England, becoming a significant movement in the Victorian
period. In 1840, the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston,
"strongly" recommended that the Ottoman government then ruling
Palestine "hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of
Europe to return to Palestine." Lord Shaftesbury in 1853 coined
the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land."

George Eliot put these ideas in novel form with Daniel Deronda in
1876. In 1891, Sir George Adam Smith wrote in his authoritative
Historical Geography of the Holy Land that the Ottomans had to be
pushed out of Palestine and replaced by the Jews, "who have given
to Palestine everything it has ever had of value to the world."

That same year, 1891, saw perhaps the greatest early Christian
support in the United States for a Jewish state - the "Blackstone
Memorial," a petition that carried the signatures of 413 prominent
Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the
speaker of the House, the greatest industrialists of the age
(Rockefeller, Morgan, McCormick), famous clergymen, writers and
journalists.

Addressed to the president of the United States, Benjamin
Harrison, and the secretary of state, James G. Blaine, the
memorial asked them to "use their good offices and influence
. . . to secure the holding at an early date of an international
conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their
claims to Palestine as their ancient home." According to one
historian, Paul Charles Merkley, the Blackstone Memorial had the
effect of "firmly planting in many minds" the "notion of
American sponsorship of a Jewish return to Palestine."

The Balfour Declaration of November 1917, whereby the British
government announced that it favored "the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," was perhaps
the single most important act premised in Christian Zionism.
Harry S. Truman's recognition of Israel, against the nearly total
opposition of his administration, was probably second. His
biographer, Michael T. Benson, finds that Truman's pro-Israel
outlook "was based primarily on humanitarian, moral, and
sentimental grounds, many of which were an outgrowth of the
president's religious upbringing and his familiarity with the
Bible." (Truman's just-discovered diary, with its petulant
remarks about Jews, makes his Zionist stance the more
noteworthy.)

The media has recently focused on Christian Zionism as though
it were something new ("How Israel Became a Favorite Cause of
the Conservative Christian Right" runs a typical title, this
one a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal). The real
story is how Christian Zionists are increasingly the bedrock of
Israel's support in the United States, more solidly pro-Israel
and more robustly Zionist than many in the Jewish community.

To those who wonder why Washington follows policies so different
from the European states, a large part of the answer these days
has to do with the clout of Christian Zionists, who are
especially powerful when a conservative Republican like George W.
Bush is president. (In contrast, Christian Zionism has nearly
died out in Great Britain.)One anti-Israel writer, Grace Halsell,
recognizes this fact and deems Christian Zionists a "more
dangerous" influence in Washington than are the Jewish Zionists.
Put positively: other than the Israel Defense Forces, America's
Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state's ultimate strategic
asset.

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The Nation "A White House Smear" claims Bushco treason over Wilson's wife! [View All] Printer-friendly format Email this message to a friend Bookmark this thread Previous thread | Next thread

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truthisfreedom (438 posts) Thu Jul-17-03 01:28 AM Original message The Nation "A White House Smear" claims Bushco treason over Wilson's wife! In this article, The Nation's David Corn suggests that senior administration officials committed treason by revealing a deep-cover CIA operative to the public through Bob Novak, columnist. And not just any deep-cover CIA operative... one who was responsible for doing delicate undercover WMD investigations... Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame. Yes, the same Wilson involved in the Niger yellowcake investigation. http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=823 <snip> The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good. This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry. <snip>    Alert Printer Friendly | Reply

The Nation "A White House Smear" claims Bushco treason over Wilson's wife! truthisfreedom Thu Jul-17-03 01:28 AM   That is "treason",,,,once again they overplayed their hand, zidzi Jul-16-03 08:01 PM, #1   wow! if you thought the spooks were p.o.ed BEFORE yorgatron Jul-16-03 08:02 PM, #2   Well, only Bush DinoBoy Jul-16-03 08:05 PM, #4   If the CIA gets pissed off enough htuttle Jul-16-03 08:07 PM, #7   HOLY FUCKING SHIT HITTING THE FAN!!! Walt Starr Jul-16-03 08:05 PM, #3   I'd imagine DinoBoy Jul-16-03 08:07 PM, #6   If Bush or Cheney TOLD a staffer to leak it, then Sushi_lover Jul-16-03 08:09 PM, #8   Yes, in fact, s/he WOULD be committing treason Walt Starr Jul-16-03 08:16 PM, #12   I don't know about treason, but it is a serious security breach IndianaGreen Jul-16-03 11:09 PM, #41   This is during wartime, which exacerbates the crime colorado_ufo Jul-17-03 01:36 AM, #57   This was never a declared war by congress. Norbert Jul-17-03 05:53 AM, #62   It's a "war" only if it suits your cynical political purposes, TankLV Jul-17-03 11:28 AM, #66   For once I agree with the caps and !'s. TahitiNut Jul-17-03 01:54 AM, #59   Oh man. If the White House exposed an operative, the are in deep shiat Sushi_lover Jul-16-03 08:07 PM, #5   The CIA will nadinbrzezinski Jul-16-03 08:11 PM, #9   I really want to know. Does the CIA really hate Bush? kysrsoze Jul-16-03 10:26 PM, #34      I imagine there are factions in the CIA Sushi_lover Jul-16-03 10:33 PM, #36      You have a point kysrsoze Jul-16-03 11:04 PM, #40      "Payback"????? Like, perhaps, the ULTIMATE "payback"? BiggJawn Jul-16-03 11:15 PM, #42      i dont think Junior is relevant indictrichardperle Jul-17-03 12:00 AM, #51         I agree with that Sushi_lover Jul-17-03 08:20 AM, #64      I think Bush Sr. is behind this whole turn of events. grytpype Jul-16-03 11:23 PM, #45      Grow nuts? DBoon Jul-16-03 11:45 PM, #49   It has occurred to me that the only way that these creeps would not be berry Jul-16-03 10:58 PM, #39   Mr. Corn Does Not Exaggerate The Magistrate Jul-16-03 08:13 PM, #10   We live in interesting times indictrichardperle Jul-16-03 08:20 PM, #13   Novak would know! Subpoena him! 8^) truthisfreedom Jul-16-03 08:21 PM, #17   Would Novack go to jail to protect his sources? RainDog Jul-16-03 11:24 PM, #46      hahaha! he could resist to the bitter end, and then give up... beaten... truthisfreedom Jul-16-03 11:55 PM, #50   WH Official = ewagner Jul-17-03 12:24 AM, #52   Glad to see you restored... Davis_X_Machina Jul-16-03 11:19 PM, #43      I agree! Rhiannon12866 Jul-17-03 02:52 AM, #61   Not to sound completely stupid but... oregonjen Jul-16-03 08:16 PM, #11   Why reveal her? Wilson seems to hint at something with his statement: truthisfreedom Jul-16-03 08:20 PM, #14   Read the article tinnypriv Jul-16-03 08:20 PM, #15   Yep, simple vindictive, petty mbperrin Jul-16-03 08:23 PM, #18   Exactly! Revenge priller Jul-16-03 08:59 PM, #30      and he's even indulged in "pre-emptive retaliation"! Lisa Jul-16-03 10:34 PM, #37   read the article please Kennethken Jul-16-03 08:24 PM, #19   "a thuggish act" JoFerret Jul-16-03 08:21 PM, #16   when i hear the word "thug" indictrichardperle Jul-16-03 08:29 PM, #22   Time Magazine picked it up! w4rma Jul-16-03 08:26 PM, #20   could it be that they are somehow setting her up for the Niger letter? truthisfreedom Jul-16-03 08:30 PM, #23   there is some motivation for this liberalnproud Jul-16-03 09:02 PM, #31   one thing troubles me about the TIME article... sham Jul-17-03 12:51 AM, #53   more here from Time mag: lanlady Jul-16-03 08:29 PM, #21   TIME acts as if it was already known that she was an operative. Sushi_lover Jul-16-03 08:39 PM, #24      well its out there now indictrichardperle Jul-16-03 08:43 PM, #25         Websearch on Valerie Plame only reveals this scandal Sushi_lover Jul-16-03 08:49 PM, #27         Sushi.....you forgot the link.......could you please post what you found? KoKo01 Jul-16-03 08:55 PM, #28            Search terms were "Valerie Plame" and CIA Sushi_lover Jul-16-03 08:57 PM, #29         It could well put her life in danger. colorado_ufo Jul-17-03 01:47 AM, #58   I'm sure Ms. Wilson liberalnproud Jul-16-03 08:49 PM, #26   damn.. i was thinking the same thing.. frylock Jul-16-03 09:32 PM, #33   I just read Novak's liberalnproud Jul-16-03 09:19 PM, #32   They'll probably claim he was covering it up.... kysrsoze Jul-16-03 10:31 PM, #35   This is a book I can't put down! n/t MaRadix Jul-16-03 10:45 PM, #38   didn't people predict Rove would try to discredit Wilson? RainDog Jul-16-03 11:20 PM, #44      If's he outed a CIA agent, this is very, very bad. grytpype Jul-16-03 11:29 PM, #47   This would make a great Krugman column. HINT HINT grytpype Jul-16-03 11:30 PM, #48   Endangering others oldcoot Jul-17-03 12:52 AM, #54   More than that Chomskyite Jul-17-03 01:19 AM, #56   Didn't one of the multi-star generals who bumped heads with Rumsfeld JohnOneillsMemory Jul-17-03 01:02 AM, #55   I remember that... ChillEB Jul-17-03 06:11 AM, #63   I just sent this appalling story to a friend earlier tonight Rhiannon12866 Jul-17-03 02:45 AM, #60   Good analysis of the situation at this blog Dudley_DUright Jul-17-03 09:16 AM, #65   A snip: chiburb Jul-17-03 12:53 PM, #68   I certainly agree with you Rhiannon12866 Jul-17-03 07:35 PM, #71      This is beyond "public perception" RainDog Jul-17-03 08:48 PM, #72   Interesting oldcoot Jul-17-03 02:31 PM, #69      Novak is an old coot... chiburb Jul-17-03 02:48 PM, #70   i said it before, I will say it again realpolitik Jul-17-03 12:40 PM, #67   It occurs to me that now they will "leak" MGKrebs Jul-17-03 09:02 PM, #73   Kick !!! WillyT Jul-17-03 11:14 PM, #74   Bob Novac, .....For the first time I can say, "Ya did good!!" goforit Jul-17-03 11:38 PM, #75

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Cheney deputies Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Eric Edelman relay neoconservative views to Rice at the National Security Council. At the NSC, they have a sympathetic audience in Elliott Abrams, Robert Joseph, Wayne Downing and Zalmay Khalilzad.

News and Analysis - 14 May 2002
"Who's Pulling the Foreign Policy Strings?"
Dana Milbank. The Washington Post, 14 May 2002.

http://www.counterpunch.org/leopold07172003.html

Wolfowitz's Fingerprints on Niger Claim
Pentagon Committee Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims
By JASON LEOPOLD
WASHINGTON, D.C

A Pentagon committee led by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, advised President Bush to include a reference in his January
State of the Union address about Iraq trying to purchase 500 tons of
uranium from Niger to bolster the case for war in Iraq, despite the
fact
that the CIA warned Wolfowitz's committee that the information was
unreliable, according to a CIA intelligence official and four members
of
the Senate's intelligence committee who have been investigating the
issue.
The Senators and the CIA official said they could be forced out of
government and brought up on criminal charges for leaking the
information
to this reporter and as a result requested anonymity. The Senators
said
they plan to question CIA Director George Tenet Wednesday morning in
a
closed-door hearing to find out whether Wolfowitz and members of a
committee he headed misled Bush and if the President knew about the
erroneous information prior to his State of the Union address.
Spokespeople for Wolfowitz and Tenet vehemently denied the
accusations.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, would not
return
repeated calls for comment.

The revelations by the CIA official and the senators, if true, would
prove
that Tenet, who last week said he erred by allowing the uranium
reference
to be included in the State of the Union address, took the blame for
an
intelligence failure that he was not responsible for. The lawmakers
said
it could also lead to a widespread probe of prewar intelligence.
At issue is a secret committee set up in 2001 by Defense Secretary
Donald
Rumsfeld called the Office of Special Plans, which was headed by
Wolfowitz, Abrum Shulsky and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of
Defense for
Policy, to probe allegations links between Iraq and the terrorist
organization al-Qaeda and whether the country was stockpiling a cache
of
weapons of mass destruction. The Special Plans committee disbanded in
March after the start of the war in Iraq.

The committee's job, according to published reports, was to gather
intelligence information on the Iraqi threat that the CIA and FBI
could
not uncover and present it to the White House to build a case for war
in
Iraq. The committee relied heavily on information provided by Iraqi
defector Ahmad Chalabi, who has provided the White House with reams
of
intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs that has been
disputed.
Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqi exiles
who
have pushed for regime change in Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans, according to the CIA official and the
senators, routinely provided Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick
Cheney
and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice with questionable
intelligence information on the Iraqi threat, much of which was
included
in various speeches by Bush and Cheney and some of which was called
into
question by the CIA.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld became
increasingly
frustrated that the CIA could not find any evidence of Iraq's
chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons program, evidence that would have
helped
the White House build a solid case for war in Iraq.

In an article in the New York Times last October, the paper reported
that
Rumsfeld had ordered the Office of Special Plans to "to search for
information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists" that
might have been overlooked by the CIA.

The CIA official and the senators said that's when Wolfowitz and his
committee instructed the White House to have Bush use the now
disputed
line about Iraq's attempts to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger
in a
speech the President was set to give in Cincinnati. But Tenet quickly
intervened and informed Stephen Hadley, an aide to National Security
Adviser Rice, that the information was unreliable.

Patrick Lang, a former director of Middle East analysis at the
Defense
Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with the New Yorker
magazine in
May that the Office of Special Plans "started picking out things that
supported their thesis and stringing them into arguments that they
could
use with the President. It's not intelligence. It's political
propaganda."
Lang said the CIA and Office of Special Plans often clashed on the
accuracy of intelligence information provided to the White House by
Wolfowitz.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the author of a May New Yorker
story
on the Office of Special Plans, reported, "former CIA officers and
analysts described the agency as increasingly demoralized. George
knows
he's being beaten up," one former officer said of George Tenet, the
CIA
director. "And his analysts are terrified. George used to protect his
people, but he's been forced to do things their way." Because the
CIA's
analysts are now on the defensive, "they write reports justifying
their
intelligence rather than saying what's going on. The Defense
Department
and the Office of the Vice-President write their own pieces, based on
their own ideology. We collect so much stuff that you can find
anything
you want."

"They see themselves as outsiders, " a former <C.I.A>. expert who
spent
the past decade immersed in Iraqi-exile affairs said of the Special
Plans
people, told Hersh. He added, "There's a high degree of paranoia.
They've
convinced themselves that they're on the side of angels, and
everybody
else in the government is a fool."

By last fall, the White House had virtually dismissed all of the
intelligence on Iraq provided by the CIA, which failed to find any
evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, in favor of the more critical
information provided to the Bush administration by the Office of
Special
Plans

Hersh reported that the Special Plans Office "developed a close
working
relationship with the (Iraqi National Congress), and this
strengthened its
position in disputes with the <C.I.A>. and gave the Pentagon's pro-
war
leadership added leverage in its constant disputes with the State
Department. Special Plans also became a conduit for intelligence
reports
from the <I.N.C>. to officials in the White House."

In a rare Pentagon briefing recently, Office of Special Plans co-
director
Douglas Feith, said the committee was not an "intelligence project,"
but
rather an group of 18 people that looked at intelligence information
from
a different point of view.

Feith said when the group had new "thoughts" on intelligence
information
it was given; they shared it with CIA director Tenet.

"It was a matter of digesting other people's intelligence," Feith
said of
the main duties of his group. "Its job was to review this
intelligence to
help digest it for me and other policy makers, to help us develop
Defense
Department strategy for the war on terrorism."

Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force

Julian Borger
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.

It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses. This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior members of the administration created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.

The agency, known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the state department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.

Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also made it clear his agency was under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already decided on.

How much Mr Tenet reveals of where that pressure was coming from could have lasting political fallout for Mr Bush and his re-election prospects, which only a few weeks ago seemed impregnable. As more Americans die in Iraq and the reasons for the war are stripped bare, his victory in 2004 no longer looks like a foregone conclusion.

The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.

Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.

An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said: "There's nothing at all unusual about people both in and out of government coming here to engage in a dialogue and to exchange views on a range of subjects."

In that guise he visited Langley three times in the run-up to war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.

Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon, and in particular, of the OSP.

In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.

William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official and Washington lobbyist for Israel and Turkey.

The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.

There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They including like-minded lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in the US capital. Few had experience in intelligence.

"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.

As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".

"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."

In fact, the OSP's activities were a complete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.

"The iceberg analogy is a good one," said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. "No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them."

The civilian agencies had the same impression of the OSP sleuths. "They were a pretty shadowy presence," Mr Thielmann said. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."

Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus.

"In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad - a highly professional body - was prepared to authorise.

"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.

In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.

The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.

The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.

The big question looming over Congress as Mr Tenet walked into his closed-door session yesterday was whether this shadow intelligence operation would survive national scrutiny and who would pay the price for allowing it to help steer the country into war.

A former senior CIA official insisted yesterday that Mr Feith, at least, was "finished" - but that may be wishful thinking by rival organisation.

As he prepares for re-election, Mr Bush may opt to tough it out, rather than acknowledge the severity of the problem by firing loyalists. But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.