The Death of a Statesman

[qanda]

It wasn't widely publicized, but I remembered tonight about the case of a man, John Kokal, found dead outside the State Department a couple of years ago. Well, I found the hard copy I had of the article and the date (November 8, 2003) intrigued me, being that it was so close to the dates we're now discussing with Gannon/Guckert.

There wasn't very much coverage of the story, even though this man died under rather odd circumstances (the guy was found wearing no shoes). Not only that but he was a member of the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau and handled classified documents regularly.

It was just a couple of weeks before John Kokal died that "Jeff Gannon" referred to an internal State Department memo in an interview with Joe Wilson. This memo would have come from John Kokal's department. Is this merely a coincidence or is there something more sinister going on?

I don't know, but I think some questions need to be answered.

Link to a copy of the story. http://www.cosmiciguana.com/archives/000509.html I could not find the original of the copy I have.

[Sparkly]

1. Please check your link

Sounds interesting!

[qanda]

2. Thanks

I fixed it.

[Sparkly]

3. Would you happen to have a link to the "Gannon" interview

of Wilson you referred to?

Thanks!

Edited to say: I found a reference to a memo here but the interview is gone... http://webdems.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_webdems_archive.html

Was it this "intelligence personnel" memo?

[qanda]

5. Here's part 1

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/newswire/nw03/talonnews/1003/102803-wilson.htm

I'll look for part 2 and 3.

[Sparkly]

7. Thanks -- sorry

Don't go looking, someone else may have it. Didn't mean to put you to the trouble, just wondered if you had it handy. I wanted to see if he said "State Department" or what...

Edited to ask: Was it this question?
TN: An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?
http://webdems.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_webdems_archive.html

[qanda]

10. No problem

I don't mind at all. I believe that's the question. I answered H2O down below which may explain this further.

[diamond14]

4. here's a working link to the story....STRANGE...the American Dr. Kelly?

http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/misc.activism.progressive/msg06064.html

John Kokal state dept suicide - the American Dr Kelly?

-snips-

Interestingly, the FOX report states that State Department officials
confirmed Kokal's death to The Washington Post yet the Post -
according to an archive search - has published nothing at all about
Kokal's death. A subsequent search revealed that the Post had made a
short three-paragraph entry the death in the Metro section on November
7, 2003. However, the Post entry stated that Kokal did not work in
intelligence and the story does not show up in the archives.

Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that
Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not
ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing
either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in
Arlington, Virginia.

However, a colleague of Kokal's told this writer that the Iraq analyst
was despondent over "problems" with his security clearance. Kokal
reportedly climbed out of a window and threw himself out in such a
manner so that he would "land on his head." At the time Kokal fell
from either the roof or a window, his wife Pamela, a public affairs
specialist in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, was waiting
for him in the parking garage. Mrs. Kokal had previously worked in
Consular Affairs where she was involved in the stricter vetting of
visa applicants from mainly Muslim countries after the Sept. 11
attacks.

A former INR employee revealed that some one-third to one-half of INR
officials are either former intelligence agents with the CIA or are
detailed from the agency. He also revealed it would have been
impossible for Kokal to have gained entry to the roof on his own. INR
occupies both a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on
the sixth floor that has no windows and a windowless structure on the
roof that has neither windows nor access to the roof, according to the
former official. The other windows at the State Department have been
engineered to be shatter proof from terrorist bomb attacks and cannot
be opened.

INR and other State Department officials report that a "chill" has set
in at the State Department following Kokal's defenestration. A number of employees are afraid to talk about the suspicious death. It also unusual that The Northern Virginia Journal, a local Arlington newspaper, has not published an obituary notice on Kokal.

[qanda]

6. Very strange indeed

I hadn't seen that link. Thanks for sharing it.

[Stephanie]

11. "a "chill" has set in at the State Dept following Kokal's defenestration"

Oh god - is that a reliable news source? I am not familiar with this story. But it is chilling, for sure.

[H2O Man]

8. No one in State

would have had access to anything that revealed Valerie Plame's identity. That is not a possibility. However, the incident you are writing about is worthy of attention on other merits. You may find that it leads closer other related parts of the Plame/neocon spy/document forgeries scandal(s).

[qanda]

9. This is something that I retrieved from dailyKos

Apparently, "Jeff Gannon" said this (sometime last year in an article on his website "Joe Wilson Lied and Owes George W. Bush and America (and Me) an Apology". There is no date stamp on the article)

"A memo written by an INR (Intelligence and Research) analyst who made notes of the meeting at which Wilson was asked to go to Niger sensed that something fishy was going on. That report made it to the outside world courtesy of some patriotic whistleblower that realized that a bag job was underway.
....

The classified document that slipped out sometime after the meeting put her name before the public, albeit a small group of inside-the-beltway types, but effectively ended the notion that she was still covert.

....

I raised all of these questions with Wilson in October 2003 in an interview for Talon News. Since I was aware of the INR report, I confronted him about it.

What is difficult to understand is the reason that the CIA would want to discredit this report. The first clue came when the agents from the FBI came to my home in March 2003 to question me in connection to the leak probe. I was flattered to think that I was important enough to be included among the luminaries like Andrea Mitchell, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews who were also named in a Justice Department subpoena of records from the White House. But most of the questions were about the INR report. They wanted to know where I got it and what I knew about it. Of course, as a journalist there wasn't much I could say without revealing my sources. I'm sure they were not satisfied, but it made me wonder why they were so interested in a document the CIA said was false."


________________________
Isn't INR the State Department's Intelligence Division?

Here's a link to the DailyKos thread: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/9/191334/0754

[H2O Man]

12. Wilson

was asked to go at a meeting at CI HQ. It is well-detailed in his book. His wife was not present at the meeting. Just CI analysts.

[qanda]

13. I realize that his wife wasn't there, but...

Wilson said, "The decision to ask me to go out to Niger was taken in a meeting at which there were about a dozen analysts from both the CIA and the State Department."

I thought that was what was relevant here.

On Edit: I don't know, I'm just trying to find out.

[qanda]

14. I found this at the Kos link:

From the Washington Post:

Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.
CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.

"It has been circulated around," one official said. CIA and State Department officials have refused to discuss the document.

On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA, posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon News questioner asks: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

________________

That helps me with what you are saying, but it raises even more questions about who was passing around a document that was supposedly from the State Department.

[H2O Man]

16. Right.

Yes, now you have gotten me more interested. From Wilson's book (pages 13-14): "The participants in the meeting were drawn from the inteligence community's experts on Africa and uranium, and included staff from both the CIA and the State Department. As I shook hands with a group of mostly young men and women, a couple of them mentioned that they had met me at previous briefings over the years. I did not know any of them personally nor did I recognize anyone by name or sight. They were interested and interesting professionals but as anonymous as you would expect in a bureaucracy that places a premium on secrecy and discretion. That said, they were a knowledgeable and dedicated fraternity of public servants, and I was struck by their commitment and their professionalism, toiling in obscurity so that the rest of us can be safe.

"My hosts opened the meeting with a brief explanation of why I had been invited to meet with them. A report purporting to be a memorandum of sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq had aroused the interest of Vice President Dick Cheney."

Not only were the uranium documents in question forged, but any memo regarding that meeting, which would have mentioned Plame in any way, is also a fake. One suspects that those who fake one document would also be the prime suspect in faking the memo. I think what you are onto is important; I'm merely suggesting that any memo that purports to mention Plame, however indirectly, is a fake.

[qanda]

17. Thanks for responding

I may have to get Wilson's book so that I can understand this a bit more.

This whole Plame things really stinks to the high heavens and I wouldn't put anything past these criminals.

[H2O Man]

18. It's part of a three-point scandal:

Plame/neocon spy/document forgeries, all of which are part of the neocon anti-American policies.

I hope I'm clear that I'm not just responding here -- I'm encouraging you to go forward with one of the most valuable threads on DU in months.

[qanda]

20. Where do I go from here?

It doesn't seem many, besides yourself, find this to be very important. It strikes me as so important that I was almost afraid to post anything about it.

In fact, I found this at another website. Apparently, people from the State Department were looking for information about Kokal's death, so many that the webhost posted the following message:

Dear U.S. State Department Readers

I have noticed that several of you are looking for information related to the death of John Kokal. I don't have anything more to offer besides what you have read in the mainstream news outlets. If you happen to be in a position to reveal any information related to this incident, Cryptogon is read widely and information presented here will spread rapidly. If you choose to contact me, do not use your computer system at the State Department. If you have real information, and would like to share it with the world, here are a couple of tips that could save your life:

The rest is here: http://www.cryptogon.com/2003_11_09_blogarchive.html#106883189968402431

I guess I can only keep this thread kicked until more people pay attention to it. I most certainly don't have the necessary tools to discover anything on my own. May I add that I thank you for your encouragement and support.

[qanda]

15. kick

:kick:

[H2O Man]

19. Important thread

which I am confident will be recognized as very important within 72 hours. Let's keep it going!

[qanda]

21. .

.

[antigone382]

22. kick.

:kick: Very interesting. Good work qanda!

[kohodog]

23. It cerainly appears that there is a link between Gannon and the Plame outi

At least it appears that Gannon was on the inside with regard to classified information. If either this or his Press Room access and questions lead back to the WH, MacClellan or Rove, we will be on our way to exposing crimes that should not (as far wrong as the politicians have gone I dare not say cannot) be ignored by either the House or MSM.

It is hard to connect the dots, but this looks to be a great find qanda.

[ewagner]

24. Agree: Important thread

but I still have no idea where to find solid proof.

I'll keep this kicked and bookmarked to keep up with it.

Thanks

[in_cog_ni_to]

25. kick!

You have to read this. It may be connected to the Gannon/Plame case.

:kick:

[qanda]

26. Kick

:kick: