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Friday, July 25, 2003

Re: Today's Fall Guy

Dear Friends:

It seems that the more Bush takes "responsibility," for the debacle in Iraq, the more others become the fall guys for his lies and deceptions. The latest scapegoat is Stephen Hadley, Bush's deputy national security adviser. Now it appears that the CIA is not the arch-villain in the scenario, but Hadley. Recent findings have revealed that the CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa.

This new information, provided in a briefing by Hadley and Bush communications director Dan Bartlett, significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. Yesterday's disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation. And yet, the claim kept popping up in Bush's political pronouncements.

The Washington Post July 23, 2003

Bush Aides Disclose Warnings From CIA Oct. Memos Raised Doubts on Iraq Bid by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus

The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, White House officials said yesterday.

The officials made the disclosure hours after they were alerted by the CIA to the existence of a memo sent to Bush's deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on Oct. 6. The White House said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, on Friday night discovered another memo from the CIA, dated Oct. 5, also expressing doubts about the Africa claims.

The information, provided in a briefing by Hadley and Bush communications director Dan Bartlett, significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The acknowledgment of the memos, which were sent on the eve of a major presidential speech in Cincinnati about Iraq, comes four days after the White House said the CIA objected only to technical specifics of the Africa charge, not its general accuracy.

In fact, the officials acknowledged yesterday, the CIA warned the White House early on that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence, was not particularly significant and assumed Iraq was pursuing an acquisition that was arguably not possible and of questionable value because Iraq had its own supplies.

Yesterday's disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation. The claim was a major part of the case made by the Bush administration before the Iraq war that Hussein represented a serious threat because of his nuclear ambitions; other pieces of evidence have also been challenged.

Hadley, who also received a phone call from CIA Director George J. Tenet before the president's Oct. 7 speech asking that the Africa allegation be removed, took the blame for allowing the charge to be revived in the State of the Union address. "I should have recalled . . . that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue," he said. He said Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice were counting on his dependability, and "it is now clear to me that I failed." Hadley said Rice was not made aware of the doubts but "feels personal responsibility as well."

"The high standards that the president set with his speeches were not met," Hadley said, acknowledging that the problem was not solely that the CIA failed to strike the reference from the January speech. "We had opportunities here to avoid this problem. We didn't take them," he said.

It remains unclear why the Africa uranium claim continued to bubble up in key presidential speeches. White House officials insist they did not push hard for the accusation to be included, and the intelligence community largely dismissed the significance of the matter.

The intelligence reports about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger, Somalia and Congo represented only four paragraphs in the Oct. 2 National Intelligence Estimate, the definitive collection of U.S. intelligence's views on Iraq's weapons programs. Iraq's alleged attempt to obtain uranium was not among the "key judgments" used in the report to support the idea that Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear program. Yet the White House twice sought to include it in a presidential speech.

Yesterday, Bartlett insisted that its inclusion in the State of the Union address was "not at the specific request of anyone" and said that one of the speechwriters had come up with the information after reviewing the Oct. 2 intelligence estimate.

The new information amounted to an on-the-record mea culpa for a White House that had pointed fingers at the CIA for vetting the speech, prompting an earlier acceptance of responsibility by Tenet. But that abruptly changed yesterday after the CIA furnished evidence that it had fought the inclusion of the charge.

The disclosures punctured claims made by Rice and others in the past two weeks. Rice and other officials had asserted that nobody in the White House knew of CIA objections, and that the CIA supported the Africa accusation generally, making only technical objections about location and quantity. On Friday, a White House official mischaracterized the CIA's objections, saying repeatedly that Tenet opposed the inclusion in Bush's Oct. 7 speech "because it was single source, not because it was flawed."

Shortly after Friday's briefing, Bartlett and Hadley said yesterday, Gerson discovered the first of two CIA memos to the White House from last October. The CIA memo, dated Oct. 5 and addressed to Gerson, Hadley and others, objected to a sentence that the White House included in a draft of Bush's upcoming speech, saying Hussein's "regime has been caught attempting to purchase" uranium in Africa. The officials did not release the memo but said the uranium information was on Page 3 of a four-page document.

Hadley said the CIA -- the memo was not signed -- noted that the amount was in dispute and that it was not clear the material "can be acquired from the source." The CIA also pointed out that Iraq already had its own supply, 500 tons, of the "yellowcake" uranium ore it was accused of seeking.

The second memo, dated Oct. 6 and sent to Hadley and Rice, was brought to the White House's attention yesterday by the CIA, the officials said. In response to another draft of the speech that had already deleted the uranium reference, the memo included fresh CIA objections to the charge, saying there was "weakness in the evidence" and that the attempted purchase "was not particularly significant," Hadley said.

The new information disclosed by the White House provides additional material for Democrats who have been criticizing Bush's handling of Iraq intelligence. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a former intelligence committee chairman and now a presidential candidate, said the admission "raises sharp new questions as to who at the White House engaged in a coverup." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who has been pressing the administration on the matter for months, said, "Congress needs to investigate this with immediate public hearings."

But strategists in both political parties said the lifespan of the criticism, and the possibility of congressional hearings in the fall, largely depends on whether the occupation of Iraq continues to be as violent and chaotic as it has been. Yesterday's disclosures by the White House came at a time of otherwise good news related to Iraq, as the U.S. military confirmed that it had killed Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, and Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a rescued prisoner of war, returned to her home town in West Virginia after four months of hospitalization.

Bartlett said he was "almost positive" Bush saw a draft of the October speech containing the Africa claim. "He has no memory of this subtraction being made," Bartlett said.

Bartlett said that while the president is "obviously not pleased," he "accepts the explanation" offered by his aides and has "the highest level of confidence" in his staff. Hadley and Tenet have taken some responsibility for the Africa charge being included in Bush's January speech.

"The president had every reason to believe that the text of the State of the Union was sound," Hadley said.

Hadley, who told Bush of the forgotten memos, declined to say whether he had offered the president his resignation, and Bartlett said he does not expect any resignations.

But Hadley said the issue is not necessarily resolved. "There is always the likelihood we will find additional information," he said.

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, visit our web site at http://www.warandpeacewatch.com or send an e-mail to: Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact: Otoño Johnston ===========================================================(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================
6:49:56 PM

Re: Truth, PR, and Washington

Dear Friends:

A recently published book looks at a shadowy public relations firm with close ties to the CIA--the Rendon Group. This company has been responsible for many of those propagandistic photo-op shots we've seen of happy Iraqis waving American flags and welcoming the conquering heroes into their country.

Just published this week, Weapons of Mass Deception, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, is subtitled "The uses of propaganda in Bush's war on Iraq". Stauber directs the Centre for Media and Democracy and the pair won the 2001 George Orwell Award for exposing the use of doublespeak in American life. Sounds like a must-read to me. _________________________

The Sydney Morning Herald July 23, 2003

War on Words Deception by Tony Stephens

A recently published book looking at a shadowy outfit with close CIA links suggests truth is a continuing casualty of wars, including Iraq, writes Tony Stephens.

John Rendon, an adviser to the United States National Security Council and contracted to the Central Intelligence Agency, flew to Australia in April to attend the funeral for the Australian TV cameraman Paul Moran, who had been killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Rendon heads the public relations Rendon Group, whose clients include the Pentagon and the CIA. He calls himself an "information warrior and a perception manager".

It was Rendon who provided the US flags for hundreds of Kuwaitis to wave when American troops rolled into Kuwait City at the end of the first Gulf War, signalling to the world that the Americans were liberating heroes.

And when President George Bush, snr. ordered the CIA in 1991 to run a covert operation to unseat Saddam Hussein, the CIA hired Rendon to organise anti-Saddam propaganda inside Iraq.

All these links are made clear in a book published in the US and Australia this week. Weapons of Mass Deception, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, is subtitled "The uses of propaganda in Bush's war on Iraq". Stauber directs the Centre for Media and Democracy and the pair won the 2001 George Orwell Award for exposing the use of doublespeak in American life.

The book describes how Rendon helped opposition groups 11 years ago to form the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi, who has been convicted in Jordan of fraud and embezzlement, remains the US choice to head a new Iraqi administration.

Chalabi's fortunes improved after the formation in 1997 of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Its founder was William Kristol, who edited the political affairs magazine The Weekly Standard, underwritten by Rupert Murdoch. Members included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle. PNAC lobbied for "regime change" in Iraq.

The post-September 11 "war on terror" brought new work for Rendon, in Afghanistan for a start. His presence at Moran's funeral in Adelaide hinted at his firm's activities in Iraq.

Colin James wrote in The Advertiser, Adelaide, of "Moran's Secret Crusade Against the Tyranny of Saddam". James quoted "a close friend, Rob Buchan" saying that Rendon's presence indicated the regard in which Moran was held in US political circles, including Congress.

Two days before Saddam's regime crumbled in Baghdad, The New York Times reported that the Iraqi National Congress, the organisation the Rendon Group had named and packaged, had returned to the country.

Wolfowitz and Perle backed the Chalabi view that any opposition to liberation/invasion would vanish quickly with Saddam's fall. Instead, Iraq now borders on guerilla war.

Rampton and Stauber have no way of knowing whether any propaganda outfit was behind the memorable toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square.

They question, however, headlines such as "Jubilant Iraqis Swarm the Streets of Capital". A Reuters photograph taken with a long lens showed the square to be nearly empty, while 20,000 Shi'ites in Nasiriyah rallied against the coalition presence.

Rampton and Stauber went to archives on the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 to produce evidence that, when Iran appeared to be winning, President Ronald Reagan provided military intelligence and the technology that Iraq used to build biological and chemical weapons.

The US then saw Iraq as a bulwark against Shi'ite extremism. Rumsfeld went to Saddam in 1983, pledging that the US would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West". The situation changed dramatically when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government-in-exile hired Hill & Knowlton, then the world's biggest PR firm.

The Congressional Human Rights Caucus heard evidence that Iraqi soldiers were taking babies from incubators and leaving them to die on a hospital floor. Kuwaiti doctors denied the story and human rights organisations finally declared it a hoax.

An opinion poll last October showed that 66 per cent of Americans believed Saddam was involved in the September 11 attacks and 79 per cent believed Iraq had, or was close to possessing, nuclear weapons.

The authors acknowledge that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons and used chemical and biological weapons. However, they say that the coalition's attack on Iraq was based on "phoney assertions" of Iraq's involvement in September 11, links with the terrorist group al-Qaeda and the possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Rampton and Stauber argue that the Bush Administration encouraged the public's erroneous beliefs: "If the public had possessed a more accurate understanding of the facts, more people would probably have seen a 'pre-emptive war' with Iraq as unwise and unwarranted."

--Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Hodder Headline Australia, $19.95. ________________________________

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

Paul Krugman takes up the case of an act of treason allegedly committed by senior Bush administration officials. By manipulating intelligence to promote a war that wasn't necessary, the administration has squandered our military strength, been responsible for the deaths of both soldiers and civilians alike, and has drained the coffers of funds meant to go towards education, housing, and American quality of life. This only provides comfort and aid to the enemy--whoever that might be. ___________________________

The New York Times July 22, 2003

Who's Unpatriotic Now? by Paul Krugman

Some nonrevisionist history: On Oct. 8, 2002, Knight Ridder newspapers reported on intelligence officials who "charge that the administration squelches dissenting views, and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary." One official accused the administration of pressuring analysts to "cook the intelligence books"; none of the dozen other officials the reporters spoke to disagreed.

The skepticism of these officials has been vindicated. So have the concerns expressed before the war by military professionals like Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, about the resources required for postwar occupation. But as the bad news comes in, those who promoted this war have responded with a concerted effort to smear the messengers.

Issues of principle aside, the invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose an imminent threat has seriously weakened our military position. Of the Army's 33 combat brigades, 16 are in Iraq; this leaves us ill prepared to cope with genuine threats. Moreover, military experts say that with almost two-thirds of its brigades deployed overseas, mainly in Iraq, the Army's readiness is eroding: normal doctrine calls for only one brigade in three to be deployed abroad, while the other two retrain and refit.

And the war will have devastating effects on future recruiting by the reserves. A widely circulated photo from Iraq shows a sign in the windshield of a military truck that reads, "One weekend a month, my ass."

To top it all off, our insistence on launching a war without U.N. approval has deprived us of useful allies. George Bush claims to have a "huge coalition," but only 7 percent of the coalition soldiers in Iraq are non-American and administration pleas for more help are sounding increasingly plaintive.

How serious is the strain on our military? The Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who describes our volunteer military as "one of the best military institutions in human history," warns that "the Bush administration will risk destroying that accomplishment if they keep on the current path."

But instead of explaining what happened to the Al Qaeda link and the nuclear program, in the last few days a series of hawkish pundits have accused those who ask such questions of aiding the enemy. Here's Frank Gaffney Jr. in The National Post: "Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power plays. . . . Signs of declining popular appreciation of the legitimacy and necessity of the efforts of America's armed forces will erode their morale. Similarly, the enemy will be encouraged."

Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden who really did attack America and Kim Jong Il who really is building nukes.

And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.

Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.

So why would they do such a thing? Partly, perhaps, to punish Mr. Wilson, but also to send a message.

And that should alarm us. We've just seen how politicized, cooked intelligence can damage our national interest. Yet the Wilson affair suggests that the administration intends to continue pressuring analysts to tell it what it wants to hear.

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

On July 14, the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired senior CIA, FBI, State Department, and Pentagon officials, released an open memorandum to George Bush detailing what they saw as the administration's effort to fabricate a rationale for a pre-emptive war against Iraq. The group urged Bush to seek Vice President Cheney's resignation, launch an independent investigation, and seek the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.

TomPaine.com's Steven Rosenfeld interviewed Raymond McGovern, one of three signatories to the memo, about the group, its analysis of the VP's role in fabricating a case for war, and what prompted McGovern-- a career CIA officer who conducted the daily briefings of the top cabinet officers in the Reagan administration including then-Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush--to speak out against the case for war in Iraq. _____________________________

TomPaine.com July 16, 2003

Forging The Case For War an interview with Ray McGovern by Steven Rosenfeld

On Monday, July 14, "Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity," a group of retired senior CIA, FBI, State Department and Pentagon officials, released an open memorandum to President Bush detailing what they saw as the administration's effort last fall to fabricate a rationale for a pre-emptive war against Iraq. The group urged President Bush to seek Vice President Dick Cheney's resignation, to launch an independent investigation and to seek the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.

TomPaine.com's Steven Rosenfeld interviewed Raymond McGovern, one of three signatories to the memo, about the group, its analysis of the vice president's role in fabricating a case for war, and what prompted McGovern -- a career CIA officer who conducted the daily briefings of the top cabinet officers in the Reagan administration including then-Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush -- to speak out against the case for war in Iraq.

TomPaine.com: Who are the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and are there more than the three of you who signed this open letter to the president on Iraq-related intelligence?

Raymond McGovern: Yes, there are about 30 of us now. This was a group that started out quite informally late last year. Many of us were writing op-eds for this or that newspaper. We knew each other from way back. When you're all alone writing these things, you really need a sanity check, so I, for example, would try to prepare something and try to analyze what I saw going on in the administration, and often it was so bizarre that I felt, 'Ray, you've gone off the deep end. You'd better check this out.' So I would check it out, not only with my fellow retired colleagues, but with the folks that I know from the inside.

It was very, very useful to do that -- a lot of value-added there. And in January, when we could see that intelligence would be playing an incredibly important role in what might be our first unprovoked war, we thought that we really ought to band together here and try and create something that was a little bit more than the sum of its parts, and speak out as a common voice for sanity, actually, because sanity is not in great supply here in Washington these days.

TP.c: You've described you and your colleagues as former intelligence and policy-level officials "from the most senior positions" in a number of agencies. That includes the CIA, the FBI and the State Department...

McGovern: And the Pentagon.

TP.c: What prompted you and your colleagues to write this particular letter, which not only calls on the president to seek the vice-president's resignation, but also the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq and an independent investigation of this matter?

McGovern: Well, it's a very simple word, outrage. What we're seeing going on here is beyond the pale.

I did a lot of philosophy studying when I was in college and good old St. Thomas, eight centuries ago, talked about the virtue of anger, saying that if there is just cause to be angry and you are not angry, then you're sinning. I just felt -- and I think my colleagues did -- that we ought to quit sinning, we ought to start speaking out and being angry, because that's the appropriate reaction.

We had been issuing these statements. Now, four of them have taken the form of a memorandum to the president. Actually, we set it up exactly as we used to in the old days: memorandum for; subject; from; and all of this business. We hadn't had a statement since May 1, and so much had happened over the past week, with the revelations that Ambassador Joe Wilson had started with, we decided that it would be irresponsible on our part not to take a look at sifting through all this information and try and make some sense out of it for those Americans who, frankly, have not had the experience that we have had at senior policy and intelligence levels, and try to just give them our read on it, tell them what's going on.

As we looked at this evidence and the bizarre to-ing and fro-ing where administration people are alternately covering up for one another and then sliding daggers into one anothers' back, it seemed to me that the American people really did need some help here. So we talked it over and we sat down and composed this thing over the weekend. On Monday morning, we sent it out.

TP.c: What is the significance that the vice president apparently led this effort to validate Iraq's acquisition of uranium from Niger?

McGovern: It goes to the heart of the problem. You see, to focus on the State of the Union address -- heinous as it is to have the president say something that's not truthful, that's sort of a sideshow. As a matter of fact, I would describe that as a red herring. That pales in significance to what really happened with this information from the forgery, and that is, that it was used in September and early October as the main justification for Congress voting to give the president authority to wage an unprovoked war.

Let me take you back to those times. During the summer, we all know that the president decided to make war on Iraq. [Chief of Staff] Andy Card said they were going to market something new, but they couldn't do that in July and August -- you don't do that in the summer -- so in September we're going to start doing that. And sure enough, Vice President Cheney issued a major declaration on the 26th of August, sort of John the Baptist to this effort, the precursor of what was to come, and he exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein in a most, most significant manner. And the heart of it was that Saddam Hussein is reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.

Now, they did that in September for one major reason, and that is, they didn't have anything else. What do I mean by that?

Well, they had been talking about ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. So any suggestion that they use that, the next person would say, 'Yeah, but those wimps over there at CIA, they say there's no evidence of that. So they'll come behind us and pull the rug right out from under us.'

'Well, let's use the chemical and biological capability that Iraq has.' 'Well, we can't do that either, because those wimps at the Defense Intelligence Agency have just produced a memorandum that says there's no reliable evidence about that.'

'So what do we do?' 'Well, the nuclear card is the big one, that's what will scare people. What do we have on that?' 'Well, we have those aluminum rods that we tried to make a big deal of, but all the nuclear scientists and engineers say if Saddam Hussein wants to buy more of those rods, sell them to him, because he couldn't possible use them in a nuclear application. So that's not going to work, so what else do we have?'

Well somebody said, 'Well, how about that report going around real early this year that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Niger?' 'Well, yeah, but we found out that those were spurious reports -- it was a forgery.' 'Well, who knows it's a forgery? Well, we do. With whom would we have to share the source material?'

'Well the U.N. has been banging at our door for it for two months, but we put them off. We can probably put them off for three or four more months. So what's the problem? We'll use this report about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger. We'll use it with Congress. We'll raise the prospect of Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons in his hands. Our first indication, our first smoking gun, will be a mushroom cloud, and we'll frighten Congressmen and Senators into approving a resolution for war. We'll have our war. It will be a great success. And in the aftermath of that war, who's going to care if we based some of this P.R. effort on forged evidence?'

Now, there was an ancillary benefit to this approach. That was, 'hey, midterm elections are next month too.' And I can just see the political meisters there in the White House, saying, 'You know, this is no small benefit. We'll have this vote and if any Democrats dare to vote against giving the president authority to make war, we'll paint them out as 'soft on Saddam' and we'll probably do pretty well with that line.'

Well, fellow Americans, it worked. They got the resolution in Congress. They got an unusually strong showing in the mid-term election. They had the war. They won the war. But what they didn't count on is that Americans don't like to be lied to -- and particularly when it has to do with matters of war and peace.

And it's become very clear now that we were lied to. Representatives are writing letters to the president saying, 'Explain how it can be that you deceived me into voting for a war?' And the press, thank goodness, is finally waking up. And the press doesn't like to be lied to either. So there's a very, very different kind of situation this month than last month, and there's some hope that the people who plotted this war and used this "evidence" in such a cynical way will be held responsible.

TP.c: What response and feedback have you received from other former intelligence officers and from those you know in the administration?

McGovern: I went through my office e-mail yesterday and it was incredibly encouraging. As usual, we had about -- I think there were four this time -- four former intelligence officers asking if they could sign on, and then there were about, I would guess, 35, maybe 40 very laudatory e-mails, saying, 'Keep it up. We really need to hear this kind of thing from people who have the credentials to put out some of them.'

TP.c: Tell me your credentials again.

McGovern: Sure. I worked for 27 years in the analytic ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency. I also did a few tours abroad, so I know the operational side as well. My initial expertise, my graduate degree is in Russian studies. That what I focused on in the '60s and '70s, and then I broadened out with much wider responsibilities.

Toward the end of my career, I had the privilege of briefing Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, Secretary of State Schultz, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, the rotating-door National Security Aides -- Poindexter, McFarland, Judge Clark -- there were a whole bunch of those. And then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who at that time was Chairman Jack Vescey, a very wonderful serious soldier.

So, there were two teams of briefers. So on any given day, I would be hitting either two or three of those very senior people with the fruit of our labors from the day before and my labors from the very early morning take. It would be one-on-one briefing. And we would have the most sensitive material you can imagine. And we were not permitted to leave any material behind, but rather to answer questions and then take back what we had offered to our people to read.

TP.c: One last question. You now work at Washington's Servant Leadership School, which, from the Web, I see seeks to create leaders that embody Christian values. Does your role there, or your belief in that mission require you to take such a bold stand?

McGovern: It encourages me to. You see, we're involved in justice work, not just charity. Our whole school is a place where people get trained for building relationships with the poor. We don't try to serve the poor. We don't try to help the poor. We try to build relationships with them and we find that we profit as much from that relationship as they do.

As I was telling the hearing in Congress today, earlier, that my work in the inner city reaching out to those poor is just an incredible impetus to my activities in this other arena. Why? Well, because we're supposed to be good news to the poor, right? And Martin Luther King, Jr. made a big point in his Riverside speech in saying 'war could not be worse news to the poor.'

And of course, that's completely right. The poor here. The poor over in Iraq. The poor everywhere. It just drains all the sustenance out of the financial situation in these countries and our country. And so, just as with Vietnam and the Great Society, off to such a good start, went down the tubes. Right now we have an even more serious situation.

And so, I am encouraged. I am freed up. I am delighted to... what my colleagues describe my doing, they say, 'Ray, you're dealing with the empire in a way that only you can, by virtue of the experience you've had in living, breathing and working in the empire. We haven't been in the same empire. We free you to go ahead and do that. Talk truth to this power, and try to talk some sense in what's going on, and expose...

There is a scripture verse that says "everything that is hidden will be revealed." I find that very, very challenging. Actually, there's a verse from John that's chiseled into the marble at the entrance to CIA headquarters that says, "And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

Now that's good stuff. When I saw that, I had already signed up and started working there. I said, 'You know, if this is the kind of place we have here, I'm proud to serve here.' And for the most part, I was incredibly proud -- and that's what makes me so outraged, and that's about the only word I can think of, so outraged, to see the cardinal sin being committed here. And that is intelligence being cooked to the recipe of high policy.

--Steven Rosenfeld, commentary editor, produced this piece.

©TomPaine.com ________________________________

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

Maureen Dowd has hit the nail on the head again. The following fantasy letter from Dick Cheney to a middle eastern ambassador may not be too far from the truth. Care to fill in the blanks? ____________________________

The New York Times July 23, 2003

Weapons of Mass Redaction by Maureen Dowd

This correspondence from the Office of the Vice President to the xxxxx xxxxxx ambassador to the U.S. was redacted by the Office of the Vice President for national and electoral security reasons:

Dear Prince xxxxx bin xxxxxx,

Thank you, my friend, for the falcon. It survived the trip on your Gulfstream. It is now eating small endangered woodland creatures at my Jackson Hole ranch.

We are pumped about the double rubout of the Hussein boys. We really needed that win. It could be a game-changer for us. The stock market killed on the killings. And the timing will help cover your royal xxx, too.

When the 9/11 commission report comes out tomorrow, I think you will be well satisfied with our efforts to keep you guys out of it.

We have almost as much experience as you at keeping private matters veiled. It's not good to overburden the American people with too much complicated information.

We didn't let a thing slip on our private energy meetings where we took care of our mutual friends in the xxx industry; we kept the bidding closed on the Halliburton contracts to rebuild Iraq, and we set up our own C.I.A. within the Pentagon to produce the intelligence we wanted to link Al Qaeda to Saddam rather than to your country.

We've classified the entire section of the 9/11 report that deals with the xxxxx family's support of charitable groups that benefit terrorists, including mentions of your wife's checks inexplicably winding up in the bank accounts of two of the hijackers. (Lynn says to tell Princess xxxxx we have four tickets for the xxxxx ballet at the Kennedy Center.)

We're not even letting Bob Graham mention the name of your country. We threatened to throw him in the federal slammer if he calls xxxxx xxxxxx anything but "a foreign government."

Not to worry that the report will shed any light on the ties between the hijackers and your government agent xxxx al-xxxxxxx .

I know you're worried that the whiny widows of 9/11 will throw another hissy-fit when they see all the blacked-out material, like they did when you whisked Osama's family out of the U.S. on a private jet right after the attacks. But we didn't go this far down the road of pushing aside incriminating evidence about you guys and blaming 9/11 on Saddam to turn back now because a few thousand families can't get their darn closure.

Buddy, we go back a long way. You've been a great host to the Bushes and you've been generous with rides on your Airbus and Gulfstream and with invites to your beautiful estates in xxxxxx and xxxxx and xxxxxxx.

But now you have to throw us a bone. Al Qaeda cells are crawling all over your kingdom, planning attacks around the world. They've gotten even stronger since the May bombing of Western compounds in xxxxxx. We need a little more than lip service about quelling anti-American fervor over there and cracking down on phony charities. You've got to at least give the F.B.I. something to work with. Don't worry. They'll screw it up anyway.

Rest assured that the F.B.I.'s taking the heat for 9/11 in the report tomorrow, not you.

I hear you want to behead that ex-spook Robert Baer, who's been all over TV talking about the way you lavish money to influence U.S. politics, donating millions to presidential libraries and the like. But after all, every million spent on a congressman's favorite charity is one less million for a terrorist's fake charity.

Here in the xxxxx House, we've mastered the art of moving beyond what people once thought was important to look for. First, we switched from looking for Osama to looking for Saddam. Then we switched from looking for "weapons" to looking for "weapons programs." Now Wolfie has informed the public that we need to worry less about finding weapons in Iraq than building democracy.

The trick is to keep moving. Just yesterday, we shifted the blame for the uranium debacle in the president's State of the xxxxx speech from George Tenet at the C.I.A. to Stephen Hadley at the N.S.C.

I'd like to return your many acts of generosity. Why not come to dinner at my Secret Undisclosed Location? Here's the address: xxx xxxxxxxxx xx in xx xxxxxx .

All the best, Dick.

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

Why has Bush gotten away with so many lies, and why does he continue to do so? He's not charming. He's certainly not the sharpest pencil in the box. So, what is it about George that's kept him safe so far? What's his secret?

Grounds for impeachment are set forth in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution: "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." The fly in the ointment, and the prohibition that keeps us from acting too quickly and doing something we'll later regret, is the overriding influence of political partisanship. After Nixon's ouster, Gerald Ford stated, "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

In the case of Bush and Iraq, the Republicans currently control both houses of Congress and their committees. With an election drawing near they'll do their best to block any serious move to impeach. But, that's if they stay in the majority, and if there isn't such a reversal of fortune that even Bush's own party can no longer stomach him and support his twisted policies.

Daily we see signs of the solid wall of opposition beginning to crumble. So, we've got our work set out for us. Keep outing the truth, keep making others aware of it, and keep the pressure on. Keep the faith, baby. ____________________________

The Village Voice July 22, 2003

Mondo Washington this week: Unimpeachable Sources Congress: Low Friends in High Places by James Ridgeway

On the stump in New Hampshire last week, Democratic presidential contender and former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham said that if George W. Bush made false statements that led the nation into war, there were grounds to impeach him. He didn't call for impeachment, but pointed out that if Bush lied, it would be "more serious" than Clinton's personal transgressions. "If in fact we went to war under false pretenses, that is a very serious charge," Graham said.

John Dean, Nixon's White House counsel during Watergate, said pretty much the same thing last month: "To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

Speaking of "civil officers" besides the president: During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, Congress made no effort to investigate and showed little interest in obtaining independent information; instead, it meekly endorsed the resolution to go to war. If there are high crimes and misdemeanors involved, Congress is complicit in them.

While legal scholars parse the niceties of common-law precedents for impeaching a president, the long and the short of it--as the fiasco involving Bill Clinton clearly demonstrated--is raw political partisanship. Gerald Ford called it right when he said after Nixon's ouster, "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

In the case of Bush and Iraq, it will never come to that, because the Republicans control both houses of Congress and their committees, and with an election drawing near would block any serious move to impeach. A party that could pull off the Florida coup wouldn't have any trouble with that task. Anyway, there is something truly absurd in even thinking that a group of male politicians who meticulously studied whether a young woman gave the president of the United States a blow job could decide what is or isn't a high crime.

And that's the central issue of impeachment--at least when it comes to developing legal rationales for embarking on the process. Scholars are fond of quoting Alexander Hamilton, who said impeachable offenses are those that "proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to the injuries done immediately to the society itself."

And when Congress does go to the trouble, it's arduous. The procedure involves the House deciding, by majority vote, whether to approve impeachment. If it does, the Senate conducts a trial, run by the chief justice and with a verdict decided by a two-thirds vote. Since 1797, 16 federal officials have been impeached, including presidents Clinton and Andrew Johnson. Nixon resigned before his impeachment could begin.

After Nixon covered up the Watergate burglary and refused to turn over evidence, the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee sought impeachment by the full House in July 1974, voting to charge the president with illegal wiretapping, perjury, bribery, obstruction of justice and other abuses of power. As Dean has pointed out, "all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of an executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power."

But even if there is evidence that Bush deliberately lied over a period of months to the American public and misused the CIA by distorting its intelligence information, any sort of impeachment procedure would, in the words of Graham himself, be pretty much of an "academic" exercise.

In the first place, most of the facts now coming to light in the media were all known, and most of them were discussed publicly during the ramp-up to war--the UN statements and weapons reports being the primary ones. Last fall, independent scientists seriously questioned whether Saddam Hussein had the capability of making nuclear weapons, and they scoffed at the idea that he could respond quickly with, at best, a limited chemical and biological arsenal. Congress--especially the Intelligence committees--had all this information available to it. Graham has suggested that the administration perhaps was engaging in a cover-up.

Of course, Graham was chair of the intelligence committee and if he thought there was a cover-up under way, everyone else on those committees surely knew what was going on--and none of them did anything.

--Additional reporting: Phoebe St John

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

Sad as I am to say this, it appears that not only Blair (for whom I care not a whit), but also Britain (about which I do care greatly) is, in fact, becoming Bush's and America's poodle.

The Blair government's puzzling commitment to George Bush's leadership in the Iraq war has turned the 61-year-old Anglo-American security alliance into an unprecedented subordination of Britain's security and foreign policy to the United States. Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon had already announced, that British military forces are to be reconfigured so as to function henceforth as Pentagon auxiliaries. By depriving itself of the ability to operate independently, Britain will abandon one of its most important assets, its possession of balanced and autonomous multi-arm military forces, capable of serving distinct British interests.

Why does Tony Blair wish this slow suicide of one of Europe's greatest nations, whose independent legacy to modern Western civilization, and certainly to the United States, is so immense? Far better for America to have an independent friend, who speaks its language, has independent weight in world affairs, possesses a major voice in the European Union, is capable on occasion of telling Washington home truths and, by using its independent influence, to force Washington to pay attention.

This is a British tragedy is in the making, and an American tragedy as well. ___________________

The International Herald Tribune July 24, 2003

Blair and Bush: When Time-honored Ties Become a Short Leash by William Pfaff

Paris--Tony Blair's current crisis, with a Law Lord inquiring into the death of David Kelly, the Defense Ministry advisor on biological weapons who committed suicide last week, surely derives in part from the prime minister's intense but puzzling commitment to George W. Bush's leadership in the Iraq war. If he or his entourage cut corners to justify Iraq's invasion, it was to serve the common cause.

The Blair government has turned the 61-year-old Anglo-American security alliance into an unprecedented subordination of Britain's security and foreign policy to the United States. This was the unspoken message of Tony Blair's emotional address to a joint session of Congress last week.

Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon had already announced, in late June, that British military forces are to be reconfigured so as to function henceforth as Pentagon auxiliaries. This is because from now on, "it is highly unlikely that the U.K. would engage in large-scale combat operations without the United States."

By depriving itself of the ability to operate independently, Britain will abandon one of its most important assets, its possession of balanced and autonomous multi-arm military forces, capable of serving distinct British interests.

In Europe, only France now will have the capacity for sizable independent military operations. All other non-neutral western European forces have been turned into specialized units of an American-commanded NATO army.

As David Leich and Richard Norton-Taylor reported in The Guardian last week, Britain has begun re-equipping its nuclear missile submarines with U.S.-$ made and -maintained Tomahawk cruise missiles, usable only with U.S. acquiescence.

Britain, under Tony Blair, has sold its principal aerospace manufacturer, BAE Systems, to the United States. The Blair government has just agreed to extradite British subjects to the United States on demand, without need for prima facie evidence.

Tony Blair, after taking office in 1997, pledged his government to a "moral" foreign policy. The Bush government claims a moral result from its liberation of the Iraqis but also claims, when it wishes, a sovereign exemption from the constraints of international law and treaty obligation. It asserts a sovereign right to military domination of the planet.

Britain gets nothing from the United States in return (other than Congressional cheers and a gold medal for the prime minister). If Bush remains in office beyond next year, Britain might find itself implicated in what could become an American national tragedy.

Neither does the United States gain anything valuable, merely the satisfactions of possessing a complaisant satellite.

Far better for it to have an independent friend, who speaks its language, has independent weight in world affairs, possesses a major voice in the European Union, is capable on occasion of telling Washington home truths and, by using its independent influence, to force Washington to pay attention.

A British tragedy is in the making. For many of us who grew up under the decisive influence of Britain's history and literature, it implies an American tragedy as well.

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

What a week it's been so far. Courtesy of Harper's, Roger Hodge give us a blow-by-blow report. Sounds like business as usual in America. __________________________

Harper's July 22, 2003

Weekly Review Roger D. Hodge

CIA director George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and again took responsibility for President Bush's false claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, but he admitted that he didn't know the claim, which he successfully removed from at least one of the president's previous speeches, would be included in the State of the Union address. Tenet said that his staff should have told him about it. It later emerged that the White House and the CIA had negotiated over the line, which "the CIA knew to be incredible." The White House, one senator said, wanted to know "how far you could go and be close to the truth." President Bush said that "the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence and the speeches I have given are backed by good intelligence," and he told a group of surprised reporters that Saddam Hussein had refused to permit weapons inspectors to return to Iraq: "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power." A White House official noted that the president "is not a fact checker." British prime minister Tony Blair addressed the United States Congress and predicted that history will "forgive" him even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq. He received 19 standing ovations; after the first one he responded: "This is more than I deserve and more than I'm used to, frankly." Dr. David Kelly, a British Ministry of Defense scientist who was accused of being the source of news reports that the British government had doctored its intelligence on Iraq, was found dead two days after he was interrogated by a parliamentary committee. Amid calls for his resignation, Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked by a reporter whether he had "blood on his hands."

General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, admitted that his troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" and said that troops might have to double their expected tours of duty in order to pacify the country. Several U.S. soldiers complained on television that morale was low and that they wanted to go home. "If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," said one. "I would ask him why we are still here," said another. "I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq." "This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld said about the unrest in Iraq. "We'll get better as we do it more often." A new study found that fast foods with high fat and sugar content "alter brain biochemistry with effects similar to those in powerful opiates such as morphine." The Department of Homeland Security announced that Microsoft was chosen as its exclusive supplier of desktop and server software; shortly thereafter Microsoft acknowledged a critical security flaw that permits hackers to take over computers running the latest version of its Windows operating system. Vertebrae of a plesiosaur, a long-necked sea reptile that lived 150 million years ago, were found at Loch Ness, in Scotland.

The Bush Administration revised its estimate of the federal budget deficit for the current fiscal year and said it was likely to be $455 billion. American teenagers were having a hard time finding summer jobs, and it was noted that the current job-market contraction is the worst since the Great Depression and that Bush could well become the first president since Hoover to leave office with fewer people working than when he took office. North and South Korean troops had a gunfight at the border. North Korea announced that it has made enough plutonium to construct several nuclear bombs, and United Nations weapons inspectors said they had found traces of enriched uranium in samples taken in Iran. Federal authorities said that 1,100 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the explosive chemical used to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building, were stolen from quarries in Colorado and California. The Justice Department said that it will defy an order by a federal judge to allow Zacarias Moussaoui, who is being tried in connection with the September 11 attacks, to cross-examine a captured Al Qaeda member who is a witness in the case. An internal Justice Department report identified 34 "credible" complaints of civil-rights violations by department employees related to new powers under the USA Patriot Act; more than one thousand complaints were reviewed. Pat Robertson called on his disciples to mount a "prayer offensive" against the Supreme Court aimed at forcing three of the justices, who Robertson said have "opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest," to retire. Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, traveled to Norway but refused to visit Oslo. Israel's transportation minister offered to provide buses to take Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea, "whence they will not return." A German tourist was arrested for trying to steal a crematorium door from a former Nazi death camp in Poland. British scientists built a better, baitless mousetrap that uses plastic mixed with a high concentration of chocolate essence. Newly declassified documents revealed that during the Cold War British scientists planned to bury ten nuclear land mines in Germany. The plan, code-named Blue Peacock, was abandoned in 1958, after it was judged to be "politically flawed." A truck driver stopped in the middle of Interstate 65 in Knoxville, Tennessee, took off his clothes, and ran around naked. Ireland's environmental minister called for a tax on chewing gum. Australian researchers found that masturbation prevents prostate cancer.

--Roger D. Hodge

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

The Federal Communications Commission's attempt to allow Viacom, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, and G.E. to gobble up independent stations seems to be backfiring. Reflecting widespread concern about the "smoothing" of the media, the Senate Commerce Committee voted last month to send to the floor a bill rolling back the F.C.C.'s anything-goes ruling. It would reinstate current limits and also deny newspaper chains the domination of local TV and radio. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has voted 400-21 to roll back the F.C.C.'s media rule. Bush, never a friend of the little guy, has threatened to veto the bill restricting big media's grasp. __________________________

The New York Times July 24, 2003

Bush's Four Horsemen by William Safire

Washington--On the domestic front, President Bush is backing into a buzz saw.

The sleeper issue is media giantism. People are beginning to grasp and resent the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to allow the Four Horsemen of Big Media--Viacom (CBS, UPN), Disney (ABC), Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox) and G.E. (NBC)--to gobble up every independent station in sight.

Couch potatoes throughout the land see plenty wrong in concentrating the power to produce the content we see and hear in the same hands that transmit those broadcasts. This is especially true when the same Four Horsemen own many satellite and cable providers and already influence key sites on the Internet.

Reflecting that widespread worry, the Senate Commerce Committee voted last month to send to the floor Ted Stevens's bill rolling back the F.C.C.'s anything-goes ruling. It would reinstate current limits and also deny newspaper chains the domination of local TV and radio.

The Four Horsemen were confident they could get Bush to suppress a similar revolt in the House, where G.O.P. discipline is stricter. When liberals and conservatives of both parties in the House surprised them by passing a rollback amendment to an Appropriations Committee bill, the Bush administration issued what bureaucrats call a SAP--a written Statement of Administration Policy.

It was the sappiest SAP of the Bush era. "If this amendment were contained in the final legislation presented to the President," warned the administration letter, "his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill."

The SAP was signed by the brand-new director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, but the hand was the hand of Stephen Friedman, the former investment banker now heading the president's National Economic Council.

Reached late yesterday, Friedman forthrightly made his case that the F.C.C. was an independent agency that had followed the rules laid down by the courts. He told me that Bush's senior advisers had focused on the question "Can you eliminate excessive regulation and have diversity and competition?" and found the answer to be yes. He added with candor: "The politics I'm still getting an education on."

The Bush veto threat would deny funding to the Commerce, State and Justice Departments, not to mention the federal judiciary. It would discombobulate Congress and disserve the public for months.

And to what end? To turn what we used to call "public airwaves" into private fiefs, to undermine diversity of opinion and in its anti-federalist homogenization of our varied culture to sweep aside local interests and community standards of taste.

This would be Bush's first veto. Is this the misbegotten principle on which he wants to take a stand? At one of the White House meetings that decided on the SAP approach, someone delicately suggested that such a veto of the giants' power grab might pose "a communications issue" for the president (no play on words intended). Friedman blew that objection away. The SAP threat was delivered.

In the House this week, allies of the Four Horsemen distributed a point sheet drawn from Viacom and Murdoch arguments and asked colleagues to sign a cover letter reading, "The undersigned members . . . will vote to sustain a Presidential veto of legislation overturning or delaying . . . the decision of the FCC . . . regarding media ownership."

But they couldn't obtain the signatures of anywhere near one-third of the House members--the portion needed to stop an override. Yesterday afternoon, the comprehensive bill--including an F.C.C. rollback--passed by a vote of 400 to 21.

If Bush wishes to carry out the veto threat, he'll pick up a bunch of diehards (now called "dead-enders"), but he will risk suffering an unnecessary humiliation.

What next? Much depends on who is chosen to go into the Senate-House conference. If the White House can't stop the rollback there, will Bush carry out the ill-considered threat?

Sometimes you put the veto gun back in the holster. The way out: a president can always decide to turn down the recommendation of his senior advisers.

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Re: What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?

Dear Friends:

Not much is known about the Vice President's role in building the case for war. To that end, three members of a key congressional subcommittee sent the following letter to the vice president, posing 10 questions for Cheney. ________________________

Tom Paine.com July 21, 2003

Ten Questions For Cheney Reps. Kucinich, Maloney and Sanders are members of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.

[Editor's note: The following letter was sent to Vice President Dick Cheney on July 21, 2003.]

The Honorable Dick Cheney Vice President Office of the Vice President of the United States Eisenhower Executive Office Building Washington, DC 20501

Dear Mr. Vice President:

While it has been widely reported that the President made a false assertion in his State of the Union address concerning unsubstantiated intelligence that Iraq purchased uranium from Niger, your own role in the dissemination of that disinformation has not been explained by you or the White House. Yet, you reportedly paid direct personal visits to CIA's Iraq analysts; your request for investigation of the Niger uranium claim resulted in an investigation by a former U.S. ambassador, and you made several high-profile public assertions about Iraq's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. We hope that you will take the opportunity to provide responses to the following ten questions.

I. Concerning "unusual" personal visits by the Vice President to CIA analysts.

According to The Washington Post, June 5, 2003, you made "multiple" "unusual" visits to CIA to meet directly with Iraq analysts. The Post reported: "Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs."

These visits were unprecedented. Normally, Vice Presidents, yourself included, receive regular briefings from CIA in your office and have a CIA officer on permanent detail. In other words, there is no reason for the Vice President to make personal visits to CIA analysts.

According to the Post, your unprecedented visits created "an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives."

Questions:

1) How many visits did you and your chief of staff make to CIA to meet directly with CIA analysts working on Iraq? 2) What was the purpose of each of these visits? 3) Did you or a member of your staff at any time direct or encourage CIA analysts to disseminate unreliable intelligence? 4) Did you or a member of your staff at any time request or demand rewriting of intelligence assessments concerning the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

II. Concerning a request by the Vice President to investigate intelligence of Niger uranium sale, revealing forgery one year ago.

This alleged sale of uranium to Iraq by Niger was critical to the administration's case that Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. During the period of time you reportedly paid visits to CIA, you also requested that CIA investigate intelligence that purported to show Iraqi pursuit of uranium from Niger, and your office received a briefing on the investigation.

According to The New York Times of May 6, 2003, "more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. Ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger."

The ambassador "reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged," according to the Times. Indeed, that former U.S. Ambassador, Joseph Wilson, wrote in The New York Times, July 6, 2003, "The vice president's office asked a serious question. We were asked to help formulate the answer. We did so, and we have every confidence that the answer we provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government."

Moreover, your chief of staff, Mr. Libby, told Time magazine this week that you did in fact express interest in the report to the CIA briefer. Our understanding is that Standard Operating Procedure is that if a principal asks about a report, he is given a specific answer.

Questions:

5) Who in the office of Vice President was informed of the contents of Ambassador Wilson's report? 6) What efforts were made by your office to disseminate the findings of Ambassador Wilson's investigation to the President, National Security Adviser, and Secretary of Defense? 7) Did your office regard Ambassador Wilson's conclusions as accurate or inaccurate?

III. Assertions by the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Administration claiming Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

The President's erroneous reference to the faked Niger uranium sale in his State of the Union address was only one example of a pattern of similar assertions by high ranking members of the administration, including yourself. The assertion was made repeatedly in the administration's campaign to win congressional approval of military action against Iraq.

For instance, you said to the 103d National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002, "they [the Iraqi regime] continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago... we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons... Should all his ambitions be realized... [he could] subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

In sworn testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, just weeks before the House of Representatives voted to authorize military action against Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified on September 18, 2002: "He [Saddam]... is pursuing nuclear weapons. If he demonstrates the capability to deliver them to our shores, the world would be changed. Our people would be at great risk. Our willingness to be engaged in the world, our willingness to project power to stop aggression, our ability to forge coalitions for multilateral action, could all be under question. And many lives could be lost."

Questions:

8) Since your address to the VFW occurred nearly 7 months after Ambassador Wilson reported his findings to the CIA and State Department, what evidence did you have for the assertion that Iraq was continuing "to pursue the nuclear program" and that Saddam had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons"? 9) Since the Secretary of Defense testified to Congress that Iraq was "pursuing nuclear weapons" nearly 8 months after Ambassador Wilson's briefing to CIA and the State Department, what effort did you make to determine what evidence the Secretary of Defense had for his assertion to Congress?

Further refutation of the authenticity of the forged Niger documents came from IAEA Director General ElBaradei, when he reported to the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003: "These documents, which formed the basis for reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded... we have found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." Yet on March 16 -- nine days afterwards -- you again repeated the unfounded assertion on national television (Meet the Press, Sunday, March 16, 2003). You said:

"We think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," and "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Question:

10) What was the basis for this assertion made by you on national television? We hope you will take the opportunity to answer these questions about your role in the dissemination of false information about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war in Iraq. We look forward to a response.

Sincerely,

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations

Carolyn B. Maloney, Member Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations

Bernie Sanders, Member Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

Dear Friends:

John Dean, the man who told President Richard Nixon there was a cancer in the White House, examines evidence relating to Bush's State of the Union address and his claims and accusations regarding Saddam's WMDs.

Bush's claims that these purported WMDs posed an imminent threat was his primary argument in favor of war. The African uranium matter is indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions arise as to the criminality of taking the nation to war. Not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush has said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony. So egregious are Bush's misrepresentations that they appear to be a deliberate effort to mislead Congress and the public. Dean concludes that a special prosecutor should be appointed to address Bush's criminal lies and actions concerning Iraq.

--Before becoming Counsel to the President of the United States in July 1970, John Dean was Chief Minority Counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, the Associate Director of a law reform commission, and Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He served as Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for a thousand days.

[See also related article: War and Peace Watch newsletter, June 18, 2003, John Dean Interview] _____________________________________

FindLaw July 19, 2003

Why A Special Prosecutor's Investigation Is Needed To Sort Out the Niger Uranium And Related WMDs Mess by John W. Dean

The heart of President Bush's January 28 State of the Union address was his case for going to war against Saddam Hussein. In making his case, the President laid out fact after fact about Saddam's alleged unconventional weapons. Indeed, the claim that these WMDs posed an imminent threat was his primary argument in favor of war.

Now, as more and more time passes with WMDs still not found, it seems that some of those facts may not have been true. In particular, recent controversy has focused on the President's citations to British intelligence purportedly showing that Saddam was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In this column, I will examine the publicly available evidence relating to this and other statements in the State of the Union concerning Saddam's WMDs. Obviously, I do not have access to the classified information the President doubtless relied upon. But much of the relevant information he drew from appears to have been declassified, and made available for inquiring minds.

What I found, in critically examining Bush's evidence, is not pretty. The African uranium matter is merely indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions of potential and widespread criminality when taking the nation to war. It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony.

Bush repeatedly, in his State of the Union, presented beliefs, estimates, and educated guesses as established fact. Genuine facts are truths that can be known or are observable, and the distance between fact and belief is uncertainty, which can be infinite. Authentic facts are not based on hopes or wishes or even probabilities. Now it is little wonder that none of these purported WMDs has been discovered in Iraq.

So egregious and serious are Bush's misrepresentations that they appear to be a deliberate effort to mislead Congress and the public. So arrogant and secretive is the Bush White House that only a special prosecutor can effectively answer and address these troubling matters. Since the Independent Counsel statute has expired, the burden is on President Bush to appoint a special prosecutor - and if he fails to do so, he should be held accountable by Congress and the public.

In making this observation, I realize that some Republicans will pound the patriotism drum, claiming that anyone who questions Bush's call to arms is politicizing the Iraqi war. But I have no interest in partisan politics, only good government - which is in serious trouble when we stop debating these issues, or absurdly accuse those who do of treason.

As Ohio's Republican Senator Robert A. Taft, a man whose patriotism cannot be questioned, remarked less than two weeks after Pearl Harbor, "[C]riticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.... [T]he maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country ... more good than it will do the enemy [who might draw comfort from it], and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur." (Emphasis added.)

It is in that sprit that I address Bush's troubling assertions.

A Closer Look At Bush's Facts in the State of the Union

Bush offered eight purported facts as the gist of his case for war. It appears he presented what was believed to be the strongest evidence first:

Purported Bush Fact 1: "The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax - enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it. "

Source: Bush cites the United Nations Special Commission [UNSCOM] 1999 Report to the UN Security Council. But most all the Report's numbers are estimates, in which UNSCOM had varying degrees of confidence.

In addition, UNSCOM did not specifically make the claim that Bush attributes to it. Instead, the Report only mentions precursor materials ("growth media") that might be used to develop anthrax. One must make a number of additional assumptions to produce the "over 25,000 liters of anthrax" the President claimed.

Earlier the same month, in a January 23 document, the State Department, similarly cited the UNSCOM report, although noticeably more accurately than the President: "The UN Special Commission concluded that Iraq did not verifiably account for, at a minimum, 2160kg of growth media. This is enough to produce 26,000 liters of anthrax.." (Emphasis added.) State does not explain how it projected a thousand liters more than the president.

And two days after the State of the Union, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage addressed the UNSCOM estimates in a more truthful light: as a reference to the" biological agent that U.N. inspectors believe Iraq produced." (Emphasis added.)

It short, in the State of the Union, the president transformed UNSCOM estimates, guesses, and approximations into a declaration of an exact amounts, which is a deception. He did the same with his statement about Botulinum toxin.

Purported Bush Fact 2: "The Union Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin - enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it."

Source: Bush cited the same UNSCOM Report. Again, he transformed estimates, or best guesses - based on the work of the UNSCOM inspectors and informants of uncertain reliability - into solid fact.

His own State Department more accurately referred to the same information as "belief," not fact: "Iraq declared 19,000 liters (of Botulinum toxin) [but the] UN believes it could have produced more than double that amount." (Emphasis added.)

Purported Bush Fact 3: "Our intelligence sources estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents also could kill untold thousands. He has not accounted for these materials."

Source: Here, at least Bush admits that he is drawing upon estimates - but this time, he leaves out other qualifiers that would have signaled the uncertainty his own "intelligence sources" felt about these purported facts. (Emphasis added.)

In October 2002, a CIA report claimed that Iraq "has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX." Bush omitted the "probably." The CIA also added still more caveats: "More than 10 years after the Gulf war, gaps in Iraqi accounting and current production capabilities strongly suggest that Iraq maintains a stockpile of chemical agents, probably VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard." (Emphases added.)

Bush, his speechwriters, and his advisers left all these caveats out. How could they have? Did they not think anyone would notice the deceptions?

Purported Bush Fact 4: "U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."

Source: Bush cites "U.S. intelligence" for this information, but it appears to have first come from UNSCOM. If so, he seems to have double the number of existing munitions that might be, as he argued "capable of delivering chemical agents."

UNSCOM's report, in its declassified portions, suggests that UNSCOM "supervised the destruction of nearly 40,000 Chemical munitions (including rockets, artillery, and Aerial bombs 28,000 of which were filled)." And UNSCOM's best estimate was that there were 15,000 - not 30,000 - artillery shells unaccounted for.

The CIA's October 2002 report also acknowledges that "UNSCOM supervised the destruction of more than 40,000 chemical munitions." Yet none of its declassified documents support Bush's contention in the State of the Union that 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical weapons remain unaccounted for.

Where did Bush's number come from? Was it real - or invented?

Purported Bush Fact 5: "From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."

Source: The three informants have still not been identified - even though the Administration now has the opportunity to offer asylum to them and their families, and then to disclose their identities, or at least enough identifying information for the public to know that they actually exist, and see why the government was prone to believe them.

Moreover, there is serious controversy as to whether the mobile weapons labs have been found. After the war, the CIA vigorously claimed two such labs had been located. But Iraqi scientists say the labs' purpose were to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. And many months later, no other Iraqi scientists - or others with reason to know - have been found to contradict their claims. Meanwhile, the State Department has publicly disputed the CIA (and DIA) claim that such weapons labs have been found.

All informant intelligence is questionable. Based on this intelligence, the President should have said that "we believe" that such labs existed - not that "we know" that they do. "Belief" opens up the possibility we could be wrong; claimed "knowledge" does not.

As with his other State of the Union statements, the President presented belief as fact, and projected a certainty that seems to have been entirely unjustified - a certainty on the basis of which many Americans, trusting their President, supported the war.

Purported Bush Fact 6: "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."

Source: The IAEA did provide some information to this effect, but the IAEA's own source was Iraq itself. According to Garry B. Dillon, the 1997-99 head of IAEA's Iraq inspection team, Iraq was begrudgingly cooperating with UNSCOM and IAEA inspections until August 1998.

Moreover, a crucial qualifier was left out: Whatever the program looked like in the early or mid-1990s, by 1998, the IAEA was confident it was utterly ineffective.

As the IAEA's Dillon further reports, as of 1998, "there were no indications of Iraq having achieved its program goals of producing a nuclear weapon; nor were there any indications that there remained in Iraq any physical capability for production of amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." (Emphases added)

Later, IAEA's own January 20, 2003 Update Report to the UN's Security Council reiterated the very same information Dillon had reported.

It is deceptive to report Iraq's 1990's effort at a nuclear program without also reporting that - according to a highly reliable source, the IAEA - that attempt had come to nothing as of 1998. It is even more deceptive to leave this information out and then to go on - as Bush did - to suggest that Iraq's purportedly successful nuclear program was now searching for uranium, implying it was operational when it was not.

In making this claim, Bush included his now discredited sixteen word claim.

Purported Bush Fact 7: "The British government has learned Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Source: Media accounts have shown that the uranium story was untrue - and that at least some in the Bush Administration knew it. I will not reiterate all of the relevant news reports here, but I will highlight a few.

The vice president's office had questions about the Niger uranium story. Ambassador Wilson was dispatched to learn the truth and found it was counterfeit information. Wilson advised the CIA and State Department that the Niger documents were forgeries, and presumably the vice president learned these facts.

The Niger uranium story was reportedly removed from Bush's prior, October 7, 2002 speech because it was believed unreliable - and it certainly became no more reliable thereafter. Indeed, only days after Bush's State of the Union, Colin Powell refused to use the information in his United Nation's speech because he did not believe it reliable.

Either Bush's senior advisers were aware of this hoax, or there was a frightening breakdown at the National Security Council - which is designed to avoid such breakdowns. Neither should be the case.

In fact, it is unconscionable, under the circumstances, that the uranium fabrication was included in the State of the Union. And equally weak, if not also fake, was Bush's final point about Saddam's unconventional weapons.

Purported Bush Fact 8: "Our intelligence sources tell us that [Saddam Hussein] has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Source: Bush is apparently referring to the CIA's October 2002 report - but again, qualifiers were left out, to transform a statement of belief into one of purported fact.

The CIA report stated that "Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain proscribed high-strength aluminum tubes are of significant concern. All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons and that these tubes could be used in a centrifuge enrichment programmes. Most intelligence specialists assess this to be the intended use, but some believe that these tubes are probably intended for conventional weapons programs." (Emphases added).

By January 20, 2003 the IAEA - which has more expertise than the CIA in the matter - had completed its investigation in Iraq of the aluminum tubes. It concluded that, as the Iraqi government claimed, the tubes had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, rather they were part of their rocket program.

Thus, eight days before Bush's State of the Union, the IAEA stated in its report to the Security Council, "The IAEA's analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets. While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for such use."

In short, Bush claimed the tubes were "suitable for nuclear weapons production" when only a week earlier, the IAEA - which had reason to know - plainly said that they were not. Today, of course, with no nuclear facilities found, it is clear that the evidence that the IAEA provided was correct.

Bush's Stonewalling And The Polk Precedent

Bush closed his WMD argument with these words: "Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide." The he added, "The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving."

Unfortunately, it seems that Bush may have been deceiving, too. Urgent and unanswered questions surround each of the eight statements I have set forth. Questions surrounding the uranium story are only indicative, for similar questions must be asked about the other statements as well.

But so far, only the uranium claim has been acknowledged as a statement the president should not have made. Nonetheless, the White House had been stonewalling countless obvious, and pressing, questions, such as: When did Bush learn the uranium story was false, or questionable? Why did he not advise Congress until forced to do so? Who in the Bush White House continued to insist on the story's inclusion in the State of the Union address? Was Vice President Cheney involved? Who got the CIA to accept the British intelligence report, when they had doubts about it?

Bush is not the first president to make false statements to Congress when taking the nation to war. President Polk lied the nation into war with Mexico so he could acquire California as part of his Manifest Destiny. It was young Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln who called for a Congressional investigation of Polk's warmongering.

Lincoln accused Polk of "employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up" the reasons for war with Mexico. Lincoln said he was "fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that [Polk] is deeply conscious of being wrong." In the end, after taking the president to task, the House of Representatives passed a resolution stating that the war with Mexico had been "unnecessary and unconstitutionally commenced by the President."

Not unlike Polk, Bush is currently hanging onto a very weak legal thread - claiming his statement about the Niger uranium was technically correct because he said he was relying on the British report. But that makes little difference: if Bush knew the British statement was likely wrong, then he knowingly made a false statement to Congress. One can't hide behind a source one invokes knowing it doesn't hold water.

Because Bush has more problems than his deceptive statement about Niger uranium, Congressman Lincoln's statement to Polk echoes through history with particular relevance for Bush: "Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. . . . Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation."

It Is A Crime To Make False Statements To Congress

Could Bush, and his aides, be stonewalling because it is a crime to give false information to Congress? It wasn't a crime in President Polk's day. Today, it is a felony under the false statements statute.

This 1934 provision makes it a serious offense to give a false information to Congress. It is little used, but has been actively available since 1955. That year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Bramblet that the statute could be used to prosecute a Congressman who made a false statement to the Clerk of the Disbursing Office of the House of Representatives, for Congress comes under the term "department" as used in the statutes.

Two members of the Bush administration, Admiral John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, learned about this false statements law the hard way, during the Iran Contra investigation. Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanors for false statements to Congress, as did Robert McFarlane. (Both were subsequently pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.) Poindexter and Oliver North fought the charges, and won on an unrelated legal technicality.

Later, one of McFarlane's lawyers, Peter W. Morgan, wrote a law journal article about using the false statements statute to prosecute executive officials appearing before Congress. Morgan was troubled by the breadth of the law. It does not require a specific intent to deceive the Congress. It does not require that statements be written, or that they be sworn. Congress is aware of the law's breadth and has chosen not to change it.

Maybe presciently, Morgan noted that the false statements statute even reaches "misrepresentations in a president's state of the union address." To which I would add, a criminal conspiracy to mislead Congress, which involved others at the Bush White House, could also be prosecuted under a separate statute, which makes it a felony to conspire to defraud the government.

Need for A Special Prosecutor To Investigate the WMD Claims

There is an unsavory stench about Bush's claims to the Congress, and nation, about Saddam Hussein's WMD threat. The deceptions are too apparent. There are simply too many unanswered questions, which have been growing daily. If the Independent Counsel law were still in existence, this situation would justify the appointment of an Independent Counsel.

Because that law has expired, if President Bush truly has nothing to hide, he should appoint a special prosecutor. After all, Presidents Nixon and Clinton, when not subject to the Independent Counsel law, appointed special prosecutors to investigate matters much less serious. If President Bush is truly the square shooter he portrays himself to be, he should appoint a special prosecutor to undertake an investigation.

Ideally, the investigation ought to be concluded - and the issue cleared up - well before the 2004 election, so voters know the character of the men (and women) they may or may not be re-electing.

Family, loved ones, and friends of those who have died, and continue to die, in Iraq deserve no less.

--John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President. The author thanks Richard Leone for the quote from Senator Taft, which is drawn from his newly-released work The War On Our Freedoms. He also thanks Professor Stanley I. Kutler for the quote of Congressman Lincoln demanding that President Polk answer without evasion or equivocation.

In peace,

Otoño ________________________________

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