-Caveat Lector-
Apparently the neocons have decided not only to start a vicious holy war
with the entire world outside the U.S. (with the exception of Israel), but with
most of the mainstream American intel agencies as well. Only a group in
the grip of a Masada or Samson Complex would tread down such a self-destructive
path.
Do they really believe that the CIA won't retaliate against them in the
most crushing way possible?
The Bush administration is going to end in chaos, disgrace and ruin.
Bush Junior allowed himself to be maneuvered into the middle of a conflict that
he can't begin to comprehend.
Donald Rumsfeld has already begun to jump ship.
--------------------
The Bush administration's exposure of a clandestine Central Intelligence
Agency operative was part of a campaign aimed at discrediting US intelligence
agencies for not supporting White House claims that Saddam Hussein was
reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons programme, former agency officials said
yesterday.
In a rare hearing called by Senate Democratic leaders, the officials
said the White House engaged in pressure and intimidation aimed at generating
intelligence evidence to support the decision to make war on Iraq.
Senior administration officials in July revealed the name of Valerie Plame,
a former clandestine CIA officer and the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was sent by
the CIA in 2002 to assess claims that Iraq was trying to buy enriched uranium
from Niger.
Mr Wilson had angered the White House by concluding that there was no
evidence to support the claim, and then going public with that information after
the war.
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation to determine
the source of the leak, which in effect ended Ms Plame's career as a CIA
operative and may have endangered agency sources who came in contact with
her.
Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: "She was
outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for
policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme."
The leak was a way to "demonstrate an underlying contempt for the
intelligence community, the CIA in particular".
He said that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the White House had exerted
unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to find
evidence that Iraq had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that Baghdad
was trying to build a nuclear bomb.
While the intelligence agencies believe their mission is to provide
accurate analysis to the president to aid policy decisions, in the case of Iraq
"we had policies that were already adopted and they were looking for those
selective pieces of intelligence that would support the policy", Mr Cannistraro
said.
In written testimony, he said that Vice-President Dick Cheney and his top
aide Lewis Libby went to CIA headquarters to press mid-level analysts to provide
support for the claim. Mr Cheney, he said, "insisted that desk analysts were not
looking hard enough for the evidence". Mr Cannistraro said his information came
from current agency analysts.
Other agency officials, who said they had been colleagues of Ms Plame when
she was trained as a CIA agent, said the leak could do severe damage to the
morale of the intelligence agencies. "The US government has never before
released the name of a clandestine officer," said Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA
case officer. "My classmates and I have been betrayed."
Senate Democrats are pressing for an independent investigation of the
intelligence leading up to the war, and are calling for a special counsel to
investigate the leak.
The Republican-controlled Senate intelligence committee is preparing a
highly critical report of the pre-war intelligence, the Washington Post reported
yesterday, which will conclude that the CIA overstated any evidence about Iraq's
weapons programmes and ties to terrorism.
But the report will not look at the issue of whether the White House put
pressure on the CIA to reach such conclusions.
The administration has refused to appoint an independent special counsel on
the leak investigation, and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said this
week that John Ashcroft, attorney-general and close political ally of President
George W. Bush, was involved in the investigation.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who said he voted for Mr Bush and
contributed to his campaign, said the White House needed to authorise a more
independent investigation. "Unless they come up with a guilty party, it will
leave the impression that the administration is playing
politics."
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