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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (56466)	7/27/2004 12:35:38 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794001

Found a most interesting site yesterday while out 'gathering'...National Security Archive from GWU...This was one of the articles, but there are many that might be of interest. gwu.edu CIA Whites Out Controversial Estimate on Iraq Weapons; Main Subject of Today's Senate Intelligence Report Remains Largely Secret; Agency Censors Document Despite Public CIA Speeches, Testimony, Statements Links The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook Saddam Hussein: More Secret History Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein The U.S. tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984 Eyes on Saddam U.S. overhead imagery of Iraq U.S. Army Identified 500 Alleged Iraqi War Criminals in 1992 Report released under FOIA is precursor to 2003 war crimes proceedings Operation Desert Storm: Ten Years After Documents shed light on role of intelligence, stealth technology and space systems in the Gulf War Washington D.C., 9 July 2004 - The CIA has decided to keep almost entirely secret the controversial October 2002 CIA intelligence estimate about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that is the subject of today's Senate Intelligence Committee report, according to the CIA's June 1, 2004 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive. The CIA's response included a copy of the estimate, NIE 2002-16HC, October 2002, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, consisting almost entirely of whited-out pages. Only 14 of the 93 pages provided actually contained text, and all of the text except for the two title pages and the two pages listing National Intelligence Council members had previously been released in July 2003. At that time, CIA responded to the first round of controversy over the Niger yellowcake story by declassifying the "Key Findings" section of the estimate and a few additional paragraphs. The CIA's censorship of the estimate mirrors its apparent treatment of the Senate's own report. The Senate Intelligence Committee had previously noted, in a 17 June 2004 press release, that "The Committee is extremely disappointed by the CIA's excessive redactions to the report." News accounts quoting Senate sources estimate that this excessive redaction amounted to 50% of the entire text. After a month of back-and-forth, not only did a number of Senators gain an education in the subjectivity of classification, but also the CIA retreated, to a final censorship level (by word-count) of 16%. Perhaps the most egregious example of the CIA's knee-jerk secrecy occurs on pages 49-50, when only one sentence survives censorship in the Committee's discussion of the British White Paper - and that sentence reports that the British had actually published the Paper. Large sections of blacked-out discussion following the Committee's Conclusions - such as the CIA's misleading of Secretary of State Colin Powell for his February 2003 United Nations speech (pages 253-257) and the CIA's misleading the public in its October 2002 white paper that left out the caveats, hedged language, and dissents in the underlying intelligence (pages 295-297) - are currently under declassification review by CIA. The Committee itself withheld these sections from the CIA's review until release of the report so as not to be scooped or spun. The estimate has been the subject of multiple public speeches, statements and testimony by CIA and other intelligence community officials - even more of which is published in today's Senate report. These include public statements by CIA director George Tenet on 11 July 2003 and 11 August 2003, Tenet's Georgetown speech of 5 February 2004, and NIC vice-chairman Stuart Cohen's statement of 28 November 2003. The Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) today summed up the committee's 511-page report as follows: "[T]oday we know these assessments were wrong. And, as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available evidence." National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton commented, "The CIA's continued secrecy claims on a document that has been widely and publicly discussed by top CIA officials, and now by the Senate, is wrong, unreasonable, and largely unsupported by the available evidence."

To: unclewest who wrote (56466)	7/28/2004 10:02:43 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794001

<<<To do less invites defeat. A mere 1% of the world's Muslim community are militant extremists. That is a mere 15 million men.>>> I think cockpit doors should be able to keep out all terrorists - whether they are from the Muslim community or not. I don't think it costs any nore. Similarly, our ports should be safe from any terrorist attack - it may even cost more more if we tried to make it safe from the Muslim community specifically. Similarly, I am against anyone planting nuclear weapons on our shores. I don't have to necessarily know their grievance. We will win this war against the current group who have us targeted as enemies, but I am sure there will be others. We have to make our country safe from all potential terrorist attacks.