BUSH HACK DOUGIE FEITH FLAMES OUT: DEFENSE OF CHICKENHAWK INTELLIGENCE AGENCY BACKFIRES
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DEFENSE OF CHICKENHAWK INTELLIGENCE AGENCY BACKFIRES
Posted By: Rosalinda Date: Friday, 6 June 2003
In Response To: FEITH FREAKS OUT AT WASHINGTON PRESS CONFERENCE (Rosalinda)
rumormillnews.com
[source: as identified, all June 5]
FEITH'S DEFENSE OF CHICKENHAWK INTELLIGENCE AGENCY BACKFIRES.
If Doug Feith and William Luti thought that holding
press conference to refute the allegations made against them by LaRouche and others, would quiet things down, they were as wrong on this, as they were on their belief that the Iraqis would be welcoming U.S. troops with flowers and dancing in the streets. Here is a sampling of some of today's coverage:
* The {Washington Post} buried its coverage of the
Feith/Luti press conference in the middle of a story reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year, in what was seen by CIA analysts as an effort to put pressure on them to shape their assessments to fit with the Administration's policy objectives analysts; intelligence officers also name Wolfowitz, Feith and Tenet as putting pressure on them over Iraq.
On 9/11, Wolfowitz said that Iraq might be responsible. In the winter of 2001-02, Wolfowitz aides told DIA analysts to try and prove Laurie Mylroie's line on Iraq being responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
* The {New York Times} reported that Defense Department
officials were "baffled and angered" by Feith's remarks. One senior official "was too angry to answer immediately." Another said, "There was a lot of doublespeak out there." Still others disputed Feith's account of how the special unit was supposedly disbanded last August, and said it was still active at least through last fall, and its assessments carried weight with the Special Plans office.
* The Knight-Ridder story, published in many regional
papers, cites three Administration officials saying that Feith sidestepped the real issue, which is that the Pentagon unit gave far greater credence to Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), than did either the DIA or CIA; they had said that many Shiites would welcome U.S. troops as liberators, that some Iraqi military commanders would surrender their units en masse, and that post-war Iraq would be much friendlier than it's been so far.
* The widely-circulated {USA Today} says that the
Administration is on a counteroffensive to try and show that there was no pressure on intelligence analysts; it cites the Feith briefing, and John Bolton declaring, "I know of nobody who pressured anybody." It cites Administration effort to change the subject away from WMD to other reasons for waging war on Iraq.
* The {Wall Street Journal} quotes an unnamed senior
intelligence analyst: "The process was somewhat reversed -- not intelligence informing policy, but policy makers going to the intelligence community to find ways to sell the policy that was predetermined."
[source: The Forward, June 6]
O.S.P. ALSO WORKING ON IRAN POLICY.
{The Forward} reports that the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans is also working on Iran policy, and is a key factor in pushing for regime change there.
"They are running their own intelligence operation,
including covert action, and using outside contractors outside the government to do their leg work," says a former top CIA official. "Their area of work has been concentrated on Iraq, which is why the intelligence on WMD was so bad, but they have a much broader portfolio.... A lot of their material is not shared with CIA, not coordinated, and finds its way into public policy statements by the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney."
The article quotes former CIA official Larry Johnson as
saying that the OSP is using the Iranian MEK organization, which is on the State Department's terrorist list, as a surrogate to pressure Iran. |
