- Sep 10, 2001
- 11,711
- 8
- 81
Source: http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8416 (so the links are active)
The Prosecution Calls...
The TomPaine.com Staff
Editor's note: Members of Congress and major media outlets are pushing for comprehensive investigations of the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence data. Although Republicans impeached President Clinton for fudging about the tawdry hours he spent with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, they have blocked open inquiries into the verity of the statements that led the country to war. As the media's shadow trial of these statements heats up, we present a partial list of witnesses the prosecution should tap.
On WMD
David Albright
Of the Institute for Science and International Security.
On the aluminum tubes: "A knowledgeable government scientist told me that the administration could say anything it wanted and about the tubes while government scientists who disagreed were expected to remain quiet." [LINK]
Hans Blix
Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations.
"We never said that we had evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but rather that we had evidence that unanswered questions remained" [LINK]
Mohamed ElBaradei
International Atomic Energy Agency Director.
"Mr. President, to conclude, we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s... we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapon program." [LINK]
Scott Ritter
Former U.N. weapons inspector.
On the line about the uranium from Niger in the State of the Union: "It's not an honest mistake. It's part of a larger effort of deception that was, you know, taken by the president, by his administration in regards to justifying this war with Iraq." [LINK]
Joseph C. Wilson
The retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons.
"My judgement on this is that if they were referring to Niger, when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, that that information was erroneous and that they knew about it well ahead of the publication of the British White Paper and the President's State of the Union address." [LINK]
Unnamed
"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." -- A top-secret report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released last September. [LINK]
Unnamed
"It's one thing to have information in a classified document with caveats and footnotes, and another to have the president flatly assert something" -- Anonymous intelligence official on the fact that the report on the uranium from Africa contained a footnote stating there were doubts at the State Department about the evidence. [LINK]
On The Threat Posed By Iraq
Rand Beers
Formerly a top White House counterterrorism advisor, now national security adviser for presidential candidate John F. Kerry.
Beers said that the focus on Iraq was "making us less secure, not more secure" by taking manpower, brainpower and money away from domestic security. [LINK]
Larry Johnson
Former CIA officer.
Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an "imminent threat" to the West was "laughable and idiotic" and that "We can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war." [LINK]
Brent Scowcroft
National security adviser under presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
"Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them... Our pre-eminent security priority -- underscored repeatedly by the president -- is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken." [LINK]
George J. Tenet
Director of Central Intelligence.
"Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. against the United States. Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." [LINK]
Greg Thielmann
Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
"As of March 2003, when we began military operations, Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States" [LINK]
Unnamed
"My judgment would be that the probability of [Saddam] initiating an attack -- let me put a time frame on it -- in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low." -- A senior intelligence witness responding as to whether Saddam would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction if he did not feel threatened. [LINK]
On The Iraq - Al Qaeda Connection
Vince Cannistraro
Former CIA counterterrorism chief.
On the Bush administration's allegations of connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda: "They're cooking the books" [LINK]
Michael Chandler
Chairman of a United Nations Al Qaeda monitoring group.
"Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al Qaeda" [LINK]
Colin Powell
Secretary of State.
"But if the heart of your question is whether or not we see any complicity between Iraq and the events of Sept. 11 through Al Qaeda, we do not have that connection." [LINK]
Unnamed
"I remember reading the Abu Zubaydah debriefing last year [in which he stated that bin Laden rejected any alliance with Saddam], while the administration was talking about all of these other reports [of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link], and thinking that they were only putting out what they wanted," -- Anonymous CIA official [LINK]
Unnamed
"It was a classic case of 'rumint,' rumor-intelligence, plugged into various speeches and accepted as gospel." -- Former National Security Council official on the Iraq - Al Qaeda connection. [LINK]
On The Administration's Handling of Intelligence
Hans Blix
Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations.
"Toward the end the [Bush] administration leaned on us." [LINK]
General Wesley Clark
Former NATO Supreme Court Commander.
"I think there was a certain amount of hype in the intelligence, and I think the information that's come out thus far does indicate that there was a sort of selective reading of the intelligence in the sense of sort of building a case... [The hype] came from the White House, it came from people around the White House." [LINK]
John Dean
Former Counsel to President Nixon.
"There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world." [LINK]
Stephen Hadley
Deputy national security adviser.
"There were a number of people who could have raised a hand [to have the passage about the purchase of uranium from Africa removed from Bush's State of the Union address] and no one raised a hand." [LINK]
Ray McGovern
CIA analyst for 27 years, serving seven presidents, now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
"I have done a good bit of research here, and one of the conclusions I have come to is that Vice President Cheney was not only interested in 'helping out' with the analysis, let us say, that CIA was producing on Iraq. He was interested also in fashioning evidence that he could use as proof that, as he said, 'The Iraqis had reconstituted their nuclear program,' which demonstrably they had not." [LINK]
George J. Tenet
Director of Central Intelligence.
Tenet told members of Congress a White House official insisted that President Bush's State of the Union address include an assertion about Saddam Hussein's nuclear intentions that had not been verified. [LINK]
Greg Thielmann
Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
"Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided" [LINK]
Stansfield Turner
Former CIA director.
"There is no question in my mind [policymakers] distorted the situation." [LINK]
Christian Westermann
A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons.
In a closed hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in mid-June, Westermann said that he had been under pressure to distort evidence Iraqi weapons programs to fit the political agenda of President George W. Bush's administration. [LINK]
Joseph C. Wilson
The retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons.
"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." [LINK]
Unnamed
A senior intelligence official for the CIA said that visits by Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here." [LINK]
Unnamed
"That kind of pressure would be enormous on these young guys." -- Anonymous former CIA official on Vice President Cheney's visits to CIA headquarters. [LINK]
Unnamed
"Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt." -- A former defense intelligence official [LINK]
Unnamed
"People [kept] telling you first that things weren't right, weird things going on, different people saying 'There's so much pressure, you know, they keep telling us, go back and find the right answer,' things like that." -- A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. [LINK]
Unnamed
"You had senior intelligence officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie." -- Anonymous intelligence analyst. [LINK]
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8416
The Prosecution Calls...
The TomPaine.com Staff
Editor's note: Members of Congress and major media outlets are pushing for comprehensive investigations of the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence data. Although Republicans impeached President Clinton for fudging about the tawdry hours he spent with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, they have blocked open inquiries into the verity of the statements that led the country to war. As the media's shadow trial of these statements heats up, we present a partial list of witnesses the prosecution should tap.
On WMD
David Albright
Of the Institute for Science and International Security.
On the aluminum tubes: "A knowledgeable government scientist told me that the administration could say anything it wanted and about the tubes while government scientists who disagreed were expected to remain quiet." [LINK]
Hans Blix
Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations.
"We never said that we had evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but rather that we had evidence that unanswered questions remained" [LINK]
Mohamed ElBaradei
International Atomic Energy Agency Director.
"Mr. President, to conclude, we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s... we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapon program." [LINK]
Scott Ritter
Former U.N. weapons inspector.
On the line about the uranium from Niger in the State of the Union: "It's not an honest mistake. It's part of a larger effort of deception that was, you know, taken by the president, by his administration in regards to justifying this war with Iraq." [LINK]
Joseph C. Wilson
The retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons.
"My judgement on this is that if they were referring to Niger, when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, that that information was erroneous and that they knew about it well ahead of the publication of the British White Paper and the President's State of the Union address." [LINK]
Unnamed
"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." -- A top-secret report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released last September. [LINK]
Unnamed
"It's one thing to have information in a classified document with caveats and footnotes, and another to have the president flatly assert something" -- Anonymous intelligence official on the fact that the report on the uranium from Africa contained a footnote stating there were doubts at the State Department about the evidence. [LINK]
On The Threat Posed By Iraq
Rand Beers
Formerly a top White House counterterrorism advisor, now national security adviser for presidential candidate John F. Kerry.
Beers said that the focus on Iraq was "making us less secure, not more secure" by taking manpower, brainpower and money away from domestic security. [LINK]
Larry Johnson
Former CIA officer.
Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an "imminent threat" to the West was "laughable and idiotic" and that "We can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war." [LINK]
Brent Scowcroft
National security adviser under presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
"Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them... Our pre-eminent security priority -- underscored repeatedly by the president -- is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken." [LINK]
George J. Tenet
Director of Central Intelligence.
"Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. against the United States. Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." [LINK]
Greg Thielmann
Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
"As of March 2003, when we began military operations, Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States" [LINK]
Unnamed
"My judgment would be that the probability of [Saddam] initiating an attack -- let me put a time frame on it -- in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low." -- A senior intelligence witness responding as to whether Saddam would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction if he did not feel threatened. [LINK]
On The Iraq - Al Qaeda Connection
Vince Cannistraro
Former CIA counterterrorism chief.
On the Bush administration's allegations of connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda: "They're cooking the books" [LINK]
Michael Chandler
Chairman of a United Nations Al Qaeda monitoring group.
"Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al Qaeda" [LINK]
Colin Powell
Secretary of State.
"But if the heart of your question is whether or not we see any complicity between Iraq and the events of Sept. 11 through Al Qaeda, we do not have that connection." [LINK]
Unnamed
"I remember reading the Abu Zubaydah debriefing last year [in which he stated that bin Laden rejected any alliance with Saddam], while the administration was talking about all of these other reports [of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link], and thinking that they were only putting out what they wanted," -- Anonymous CIA official [LINK]
Unnamed
"It was a classic case of 'rumint,' rumor-intelligence, plugged into various speeches and accepted as gospel." -- Former National Security Council official on the Iraq - Al Qaeda connection. [LINK]
On The Administration's Handling of Intelligence
Hans Blix
Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations.
"Toward the end the [Bush] administration leaned on us." [LINK]
General Wesley Clark
Former NATO Supreme Court Commander.
"I think there was a certain amount of hype in the intelligence, and I think the information that's come out thus far does indicate that there was a sort of selective reading of the intelligence in the sense of sort of building a case... [The hype] came from the White House, it came from people around the White House." [LINK]
John Dean
Former Counsel to President Nixon.
"There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world." [LINK]
Stephen Hadley
Deputy national security adviser.
"There were a number of people who could have raised a hand [to have the passage about the purchase of uranium from Africa removed from Bush's State of the Union address] and no one raised a hand." [LINK]
Ray McGovern
CIA analyst for 27 years, serving seven presidents, now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
"I have done a good bit of research here, and one of the conclusions I have come to is that Vice President Cheney was not only interested in 'helping out' with the analysis, let us say, that CIA was producing on Iraq. He was interested also in fashioning evidence that he could use as proof that, as he said, 'The Iraqis had reconstituted their nuclear program,' which demonstrably they had not." [LINK]
George J. Tenet
Director of Central Intelligence.
Tenet told members of Congress a White House official insisted that President Bush's State of the Union address include an assertion about Saddam Hussein's nuclear intentions that had not been verified. [LINK]
Greg Thielmann
Former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
"Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided" [LINK]
Stansfield Turner
Former CIA director.
"There is no question in my mind [policymakers] distorted the situation." [LINK]
Christian Westermann
A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons.
In a closed hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in mid-June, Westermann said that he had been under pressure to distort evidence Iraqi weapons programs to fit the political agenda of President George W. Bush's administration. [LINK]
Joseph C. Wilson
The retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons.
"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." [LINK]
Unnamed
A senior intelligence official for the CIA said that visits by Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here." [LINK]
Unnamed
"That kind of pressure would be enormous on these young guys." -- Anonymous former CIA official on Vice President Cheney's visits to CIA headquarters. [LINK]
Unnamed
"Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt." -- A former defense intelligence official [LINK]
Unnamed
"People [kept] telling you first that things weren't right, weird things going on, different people saying 'There's so much pressure, you know, they keep telling us, go back and find the right answer,' things like that." -- A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. [LINK]
Unnamed
"You had senior intelligence officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie." -- Anonymous intelligence analyst. [LINK]
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8416
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