Credibility Gap

[unfrigginreal]

Why the White House can’t drive a stake through the story of Niger, uranium and the CIA agent

Sept. 30 — It started out as just 16 words in the president’s State of the Union address. But like all good examples of political chaos theory, it’s the smallest details that can cause the biggest dislocations. If only the White House had dropped the brief line about Saddam’s nuclear program and the link with Africa. That, at least, was the sentiment inside the Bush administration back in July, when it first got a taste of the kind of trial by fire that Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has been enduring for months.

BACK THEN, AT THE start of summer, the White House halted the runaway train by tying two senior officials to the track: George Tenet, the director of the CIA, and Stephen Hadley, deputy national security advisor to the president. With not one but two officials sacrificing themselves (at least with public admissions of guilt), the seemingly technical story just evaporated into the summer heat. But the truth is that the story never went away. The White House tactics of dumping on Tenet and Hadley left many inside the administration—including at the White House itself—bitterly disappointed with their own leadership. That bitterness did not fade over the summer.

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/974087.asp

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Please read if you get the chance...huge story about the State Department and the CIA fighting the Neocons.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. this is more than huge

this is almost a civil war

[DrBB]

2. CIA leekage IN this story?

Referring to Powell's briefing before his big UN speech:

How could such poor intelligence rise all the way to the top of the Bush administration? The original material came from the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella group of exiles headed by Ahmed Chalabi, the former banker who now heads Iraq’s governing council. Chalabi’s material found its way up to the highest levels of U.S. policymaking—and the White House script—through three routes, according to officials present at the CIA review.

So, we were wondering if maybe disgruntled CIA people would continue to dribble out tidbits to keep this all going? I detect the presence of a couple here, for sure. The story isn't just describing the conflict between CIA and the neocons, it's participating in it!

[teryang]

3. The title should be "Liar Powell runs for cover"

The rats are scurrying about now, trying to hide their lying asses. Who's the senior state dept. official? Armitage? The mention of Chalabi being a banker left out one word "crooked." This qualification lent him special credibility with politicians in the regime who made their bones bilking America's banking system in the 80s.

[DrBB]

4. More! This is great stuff

Fascinating sidelight on Tenet as Bush lapdog here:

Even Tenet, who had closely aligned himself with Powell’s mission of weeding out the poor intel, was pushing for more terrorist accusations to survive. The pressure on Powell continued with phone calls through the night before he traveled to the U.N. Tenet’s anguish was clear to those present at the intelligence review. “If you’ve briefed the president and the vice-president on some things and then suddenly you are backing off them, you have a lot of ground to cover,” said one official in his conference room before Powell’s speech. “You’ve got to make the pitch, even if your heart isn’t in it.”

Telling them what they wanted to hear, then hearing from his own that the evidence just wasn't there. What do you do? You find a way to fudge, get off the hook. Keep telling 'em what they want and hope it all gets covered over by the war.

And the more I look at this, the more it looks like something provoked and steered by dissident CIA sources. Not only that negative light on Tenet, but the structure of the whole piece--the way it deliberately hangs this broad analysis of intel fudging and court politics on the narrow peg of traitorgate, a logically separate issue:

In fact, the scandal lives on because it’s about a fundamental question: Did the Bush administration mislead the world in going to war in Iraq?

Well, yeah, what DUer could not but applaud such a statement? But it's not strictly accurate: the scandal lives on because the idea of high political shennanigans and illegal, ill-considered vengeance taking is much juicier than those ""sixteen little words." If Novak had been a decent journalist and had decided the revelation was irrelevant--which it was--then we'd not have heard word ONE about this.

So my sense is that Wolfe is getting new info from CIA dissidents and wants it out there and he's hanging it on traitorgate. This article itself is a move in the dissidents' anti-neocon chess game, IMO. And hoo boy is it fun to watch.

[The Magistrate]

5. This Is Not Going To Go Away

This story is being driven by the C.I.A. itself.

The professions do not like being second-guessed by political shops like Rumsfeld's little in-house agency, and they detest having their work cherry-picked to predetermined conclusions. That one of their own was exposed to protect these amatuer medlings will have produced a cold and deadly rage.

The C.I.A., you may be sure, already knows who shopped Ms. Plame and her network. So any attempt at cover-up and phony investigation will fail. Nor will these people be satisfied with the mere tool who made the call: they will want the man behind it....

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"