Former CIA director used Pentagon ties to introduce Iraqi defector

[huckleberry]

This must be the big Knight Ridder story that will be breaking tomorrow!

By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel

Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - A former CIA director who advocated war against Saddam Hussein helped arrange the debriefing of an Iraqi defector who falsely claimed that Iraq had biological-warfare laboratories disguised as yogurt and milk trucks.


R. James Woolsey's role as a go-between was detailed in a classified Defense Department report chronicling how the defector's assertion came to be included in the Bush administration's case for war even after the defector was determined to be a fabricator.


A senior U.S. official summarized portions of the report for Knight Ridder on condition of anonymity because it's top secret. The report said that on Feb. 11, 2002, Woolsey telephoned Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Linton Wells about the defector and told him how to contact the man, who'd been produced by an Iraqi exile group eager to oust Saddam. Wells said he passed the information to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

more at
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9165361.htm

[maddezmom]

1. little by little...the truth will be known n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. Woolsey = NeoCon. Just part of the plan to get us into a war with Iraq.

[hansolsen]

10. Yes, and how often has the SOB been on cable news selling war

This guy is all over cable news puffing up Shrub's war plans, minimizing problems in Iraq, rationalizing all Bremer's mistakes, and patting himself on the back for being such a consummate genius.

I despise the bastard.

[DeepModem Mom]

17. And also on cable TV parading his contempt for Bill Clinton --

looking down his sneering, sanctimonious, war-profiteering nose!

[ewagner]

3. And, of course,

this is the same "expert" CNN and MSNBC used to confirm the need for attacking Saddam...........

nice going "independent media" <sarcasm off>

[movonne]

4. Is this the big surprise that Knight Rider was suppose to release tomorrow

[blm]

8. These two writers are the same ones who broke the story about the Bushies

wanting the CIA to "cook the books" on Iraq back in Oct.2002. Too bad it was after the IWR vote.

They have been the best reporters on this story so far out of all the mainstream media.

[bobthedrummer]

5. drip, drip, drip...

[blm]

6. HAHAH...so happy that focker is finally getting nailed.

He was so OVERTHETOP to get to war.

He almost got nailed on a few Nightline shows last year.

[Miss Authoritiva]

7. Do they mean this R. James Woolsey??

"Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey is a prominent example of the phenomenon, mixing his business interests with what he contends are the country's strategic interests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior government advisor on intelligence and national security issues, including Iraq. Meanwhile, he works for two private companies that do business in Iraq and is a partner in a company that invests in firms that provide security and anti-terrorism services."


http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/reconstruction.html

[Zorra]

16. And this R. James Woolsey?

PNAC Woolsey on Iraq:

DLC | Blueprint Magazine | May 21, 2002
America's New War: Should Iraq be Next?
A Point/Counterpoint With Leon Fuerth
By R. James Woolsey

POINT: Europe delayed confronting Hitler until he was strong. We shouldn't wait to stop Saddam.

For his part, Saddam only needs time to add nuclear and longer-range missile capabilities to his current arsenal of chemical and bacteriological weapons, and short-range missiles. He will then be able to deter coalitions from forming against him, to dominate his corner of the world, and to make it far less likely that we will be able to interrupt his rule and his dynasty. Terrorist attacks on us serve these ends if they help keep us away from him.

The case for removing Saddam only becomes stronger with the passage of time. First, there is no reasonable debate about the proposition that he has chemical and bacteriological weapons and short-range ballistic missiles. In the May issue of Vanity Fair, for example, writer David Rose debriefs an Iraqi defector who chronicles the locations of their production in Iraq -- including the use of mobile laboratories for making bacteriological agents. Rose also revealed Iraqi work on ballistic missiles of increasingly longer range that will soon be capable of reaching Europe. The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a nonprofit organization, has published details about the four tons of VX nerve gas and the several hundred tons of other chemical agents Iraq possesses. In addition to hiding many tons of growth media for biological agents and pursuing its work on smallpox and anthrax, Iraq is the only nation in the world to have weaponized aflatoxin, whose primary purpose is to cause liver cancer in children.

But Iraq is just the next battle in a war that will take a number of years, quite possibly decades. Given the three major movements in the Middle East which are, in essence, at war with us, we will not have peace until we defeat them and win this fourth world war. To win it, we must decide that we are fighting it in no small part to bring freedom and democracy to those whom we want to have as friends and allies: the people of the Arab and Muslim worlds

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=2&kaid=124&subid=307&contentid=250507

Woolsey, responding to questions about George Tenet from Jim Lehrer:

R. JAMES WOOLSEY, Former CIA Director: I think he has the personal integrity to call it straight, to be the skunk at the garden party in a sense, the director of Central Intelligence often has to be.

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, I’ve known him since he was staff director as well, and I worked very close with him in the two years I was DCI when he was the chief intelligence staffer for the National Security Council. And I’ve kept up with him over the course of the last several years while he’s been--two years while he’s been out at Langley. I think George also has--he has an excellent sense of humor, and he has--

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Because often the intelligence doesn’t comport with what the policy makers would like for it to say. You are always telling people when you’re director of Central Intelligence things that they don’t want to hear. I think George has the integrity to do that. Sometimes it’s good news, but often it’s not.

R. JAMES WOOLSEY: That’s right. And I think that shows a certain deft capacity for deception which really suits him very well for the job.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/fedagencies/march97/cia_3-19.html

[Miss Authoritiva]

27. That's what I always look for in a man:

A sense of humor and a certain deft capacity for deception!

Thanks for the links.

[Zorra]

28. De nada. Perfect republican credentials, eh?

Well, maybe not the sense of humor, but the certain deft capacity for deception seems to be a defining characteristic these days.

[teryang]

9. This murderous liar is the same "expert"

...that the corporate whore networks roll out to cheer up the faithful with terrorist bullshit stories whenever the tidal wave of bad news from Iraq becomes so overwhelming that it breaks through the corporate veil.

[UpInArms]

11. Woolsey brought Tenet to the CIA

and I still think that is why Tenet continued to support all of this crap.

[Octafish]

12. NowTHAT's reporting!

EXCERPT...

He's also close to the Iraqi National Congress, the former emigre group led by Ahmad Chalabi, whom U.S. intelligence agencies now suspect of passing highly classified American secrets to Iran. Chalabi vehemently denies the charge.

SNIP...

After several meetings, a DIA debriefer concluded that some of Harith's information "seemed accurate, but much of it appeared embellished" and he apparently "had been coached on what information to provide."

CONTINUED AT ORIGINAL SOURCE:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9165361.htm

Who do you suppose was doing the coaching? Robert Gates?

EDIT: wrong tycoon.

[Rose Siding]

13. Holy nefarious evil-doers

Can ties to bogus Niger documents and Chalabi's forgery shop be far behind?

[bobthedrummer]

14. It's a worldwide intelligence failure-time to tell the truth and PARTY.

That's as positive as I can get if the truth be known.

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

15. more than just in bed with the INC

he was actually working FOR the INC for awhile.

The new Woodward and Bernstein?

[mallard]

18. "I see no conflict"...

... with those lucrative contracts awarded along the way!

{sic}

[grasswire]

19. yes!!

Kick that raggedy ass of Woolsey's down the street and then kick him some more!

He's been playing both sides and making money off misery.

Yes!

Yes!

[Cooley Hurd]

20. kick - Woolsey's been, as of late, all over the cable news shows...

...defending Cheney's "Saddam-al Qaeda" mantra. This explains why...:eyes:

[Disturbed]

21. TV Media complicit in War Crimes

Look who owns a lot of the TV Media- part of the Military Industrial Complex.

Major Network Ownership Rundown:

CBS: Westinghouse Power
NBC: General Electric
FOX: Rupert "Satan" Murdoch
ABC: Walt Disney Corperation

The Plutocracy likes War. It's good for profits.

[DeepModem Mom]

22. kick

[bobthedrummer]

23. Double Agent Kick.

:dem::kick:

[Oilwellian]

24. I wonder who the senior official is

A senior U.S. official summarized portions of the report for Knight Ridder on condition of anonymity because it's top secret.

We should write MSNBC & CNN and ask why they give Woolsey the spotlight, considering this new information. It's time the light shine on these war-profiteering cockroaches.

[Rose Siding]

26. Acting head of the CIA, perhaps?

just yesterday he lobbed some contradictions to the admin's 'mssg'-

snip>
Those comments, by John E. McLaughlin, were aimed at the Senate Intelligence Committee, which issued a report last week that portrayed American intelligence agencies as having exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had illicit weapons. But the comments also were an implicit retort to arguments that the Central Intelligence Agency, not President Bush, was primarily responsible for sending the country to war.

The Senate panel dissected the intelligence behind a National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002. That document included flat assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program, statements that the Senate committee called unfounded and unreasonable.

But to treat the document as a pivotal element in the march to war would be "an oversimplification of the situation,'' Mr. McLaughlin said on CNN, in one of a series of interviews intended to counter the sharp criticism of the agency, adding, "If there wasn't sufficient debate about these issues, it wasn't the fault of the people who prepared this estimate.''

[chaumont58]

25. I would like to know who in the Clinton administration recommended R James

Woolsey was appointed and confirmed. According to R James, he then couldn't get a face to face meeting with Clinton.
Was Staphlococcus still on staff at the time of R James' recommendation?