Here's more on the Plame leak connection to false WMD info in Iraq...

[FormerRepublican]

As we know, Judith Miller is rotting in jail for refusing to reveal her source regarding the Plame leak. We also know that she printed numerous false stories about WMD in Iraq and we know that one of her primary sources is Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress.

We know that Chalabi was discredited in June 2004, the same month that Judith Miller was Subpoenaed.

Now, here's a news article that talks about the other side of the story. You read between the lines:

"Dec. 15 issue - A memo written by a top Washington lobbyist for the controversial Iraqi National Congress raises new questions about the role Vice President Dick Cheney’s office played in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

The memo, obtained by NEWSWEEK, suggests that the INC last year was directly feeding intelligence reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and purported ties to terrorism to one of Cheney’s top foreign- policy aides. Cheney staffers later pushed INC info—including defectors’ claims about WMD and terror ties—to bolster the case that Saddam’s government posed a direct threat to America. But the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have strongly questioned the reliability of defectors supplied by the INC.

For months, Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two “U.S. governmental recipients” for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, “defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed”; the info was then reported to, among others, “appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.” The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3660169

Why did Cheney bypass intelligence in talking to the INC? Because intelligence filters out false data, and he wanted false data treated as truth. But who was the fall guy when the info was proved false? The intelligence community for failing to vet it.

Chalabi was the conduit used to spread the false stories about WMD in Iraq to bolster the case for war. Cheney's office was the Bush Administration conduit that leaked the info - I suspect we had a double circle of information flow going both out and in the WH. Judith Miller was the conduit that fed the info to the public.

The only part I don't know, but I suspect, is that the Iraqi National Congress and/or Chalabi leaked the fake Niger documents to Italy.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/4/mccollam-list.asp?printerfriendly=yes
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/why/chalabi.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/wilson.html
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?030331fa_fact1

[Carolab]

1. Again, points to Cheney.

That's who Miller is really protecting.

[NMDemDist2]

2. agreed, I always have thought the Leaker was Scooter Libby

who is Cheney's CoS

I just hope the Special Counsel gets to the VP's office :evilgrin:

[hootinholler]

3. They would have planted the forgeries

Not leaked them. Other than that, you're on the right track. Nice links to the OSP, that might be able to wrap Fieth? up in this too. (I don't think I have the correct name there) That would bring in what Sibel knows about serious crimes committed by PNAC operatives.

Ok, so Cheney's job was to get the justifying 'intel' together. In the meantime, Rummie was illegally shifting funds from the Afgan conflict prepping the invasion. All this was happening before * went to Congress.

Can we just indict them all?

-Hoot

[donkeyotay]

4. It's just the tip of the iceberg

The media is pretending to cover this story. They're tempting us with visions of seeing Rove get his due. But what you're talking about here is the real story. People in our government played fast and loose with the law in order to achieve this war. They had to have it, and they pulled out all the stops. The scandal is huge. It was a conspiracy. Our country has been hijacked. That's the story.

Miller was a conduit for Chalabi... a fellow that was being PAID with tax monies... a fellow that's still doing very fine, thank you.

Justice. The whole thing screams for justice, and seeing Rove in an orange jumpsuit, as pleasant as that image may be, really has nothing to do with what's at stake.

Thanks for the post.

[hootinholler]

5. .

:kick:

[hootinholler]

7. ..

:kick:

[whosinpower]

6. I've said it before and I'll say it again

I think the cries for impeachment should not be for Bush - rather they should be for Cheney.

Bring down Rove and impeach Cheney and the whole Bush of cards all falls down....revealing what a lame duck Bush trully is.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. Chalabi was a Chicago Business School neocon

and close friends with The Weekly Standard neocons. Remember all those detailed stories from them supporting the war? Chalabi and the INC were giving the Weekly Standard the same intel Cheney was getting.

[cyberpj]

9. Thanks for posting - and for 4 great links. And welcome to DU -

glad you're here! :hi:

[Emit]

10. kick n/t

[Ouabache]

11. Once you wrap your head around the scope of it

It was/is entirely a hi-jacking of the government by a criminal enterprise and conspiracy with intent to commit treason. They not only intended to to do it. They have done it.

[Emit]

12. Yes, connecting the dots...

Here's an interesting, albeit speculative, connect-the-dot piece (It's been posted on a few threads here at DU) that touches upon some of the info that FormerRepublican has hypothesized here in his OP. And below this, I have posted some parts of another thread that also connect to the big picture. This is much bigger than just Rove, IMO.

<<snip>>
This isn't about Rove.
It's about a cabal of war hawks inside the administration who passed on this information to others without telling them about Plame-Wilson's deep cover status, perhaps suggesting that she was just an analyst working at a desk rather than a covert operative involved in a vitally important overseas operation, the knowledge of which was highly compartmentalized and only dispensed on a need-to-know basis. When Rove and his shills blabbed to reporters and anyone who would listen, they didn't realize that they were aiding and abetting an elaborate ploy to stick it to the CIA.

Seen against the backdrop of the fierce intra-bureaucratic war that broke out in the administration in the run-up to the Iraq war – with the CIA and the mainline intelligence and diplomatic communities pitted against civilian neoconservatives in the upper echelons of the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President – the outing of Plame and her colleagues amounts to an act of espionage committed out of a desire to exact revenge. The leakers meant to retaliate not just against Joe Wilson, through his wife, but against the "old guard" that was resisting the campaign to lie us into war. When the CIA wouldn't go along with the neocon program and "spice up" their analyses with Ahmed Chalabi's tall tales and the outright forgery of the Niger uranium documents, the War Party struck back at them with the sort of viciousness for which the neocons are rightly renowned.
<<snip>>

http://antiwar.com/justin /
__________________________________________________________________

That, and, here is some more 'food for thought' related to this, from another poster on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

First, still_one posted this:

http://s93118771.onlinehome.us/DU/letter.pdf#search= \'Valerie%20was%20involved%20in%20a%20sting%20operation%20...\'

COVER-UP OF
TREASON
Time magazine’s Joe Klein’s July 5 article, page 21 revealed that Valerie Plame
was “active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of Weapons of Mass
Destruction components” when her identity was exposed by the White House. It
also said “Only a high-ranking official could have had access to the knowledge”
that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent.

Since the Republicans refuse to hold investigations
on the Plame matter, our study group believes there
is more to the White House revealing Valerie Plame’s
covert CIA status.

Consider this:
1) News records show that in 1995, Vice President
Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, was fined
$1.2 million for illegal sales of dual-use nuclear
components to Libya. Shortly before becoming
Vice President he bitterly assailed U.S. policy
against selling such components to Syria and Iran.
Apparently the policy hurt Halliburton’s bottom
line.

2) Other countries are investigating Vice President
Cheney for illegal bribery and various other
offenses connected to Halliburton as well as his
paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to secret
Swiss bank accounts

3) The Atomic Energy Commission has said a North
American company is one of 20 being investigated
for black-market sales of WMD materials.

We believe it is possible that Valerie Plame was
outed and the CIA sting operation exposed because
it was coming close to discovering that Vice
President Cheney and the Hallibuton company he
has awarded billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to in
non-bid contracts—violated U.S. laws that restricted
sales of nuclear components to Middle Eastern and
Asian countries, including Pakistan.

In addition, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds—gagged
by Attorney General John Ashcroft—said in her
testimony to the 9/11 Commission that if what she
knows is revealed, it could lead to charges of
TREASON being leveled against elected officials at
top levels of the U.S. government, “Certain elected
officials will stand trial and go to prison”.

If what Sibel Edmonds says is accurate, then
all of those who have been involved in keeping this
information from reaching the public are complicit
in cover-up and this TREASON. The same crime
that brought Nixon down.

There is a question of where the Vice President’s
—and President’s—loyalties lie: to corporate friends
and their companies’ bottom line; or to the laws and
the Constitution of the United States and the security
and well-being of the American people?

In any case, the exposure of Valerie Plame by the
White House was and is TREASONOUS. Americans
should know the truth about Sibel Edmonds and
Valerie Plame.

It is the responsibility of the media and Congress to
investigate and expose these wrongdoings, and safeguard
this country against this type of obstruction
and threat to the American people.

We want to know WHY Congress and the
Justice Department are not fulfilling their
role to the American people?
WHEN will you start ?




Then, on that same DU thread by still_one:

kskiska posted this:
more…
Sent by a friend (cites daily kos as source):

Not only was Plame's cover blown, so was that of her cover company, Brewster, Jennings & Associates. With the public exposure of Plame, intelligence agencies all over the world started searching data bases for any references to her (TIME Magazine). Damage control was immediate, as the CIA asserted that her mission had been connected to weapons of mass destruction.

However, it was not long before stories from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal tied Brewster, Jennings & Associates to energy, oil and the Saudi-owned Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO. Brewster Jennings had been a founder of Mobil Oil company, one of Aramco's principal founders.

According to additional sources interviewed by Wayne Madsen, Brewster Jennings was, in fact, a well-established CIA proprietary company, linked for many years to ARAMCO. The demise of Brewster Jennings was also guaranteed the moment Plame was outed.

It takes years for Non-Official Covers or NOCs, as they are known, to become really effective. Over time, they become gradually more trusted; they work their way into deeper information access from more sensitive sources. NOCs are generally regarded in the community as among the best and most valuable of all CIA operations officers and the agency goes to great lengths to protect them in what are frequently very risky missions.

By definition, Valerie Plame was an NOC. Yet unlike all other NOCs who fear exposure and torture or death from hostile governments and individual targets who have been judged threats to the United States, she got done in by her own President, whom we also judge to be a domestic enemy of the United States.

Moreover, as we will see below, Valerie Plame may have been one of the most important NOCs the CIA had in the current climate. Let's look at just how valuable she was.

ARAMCO

According to an April 29, 2002 report in Britain's Guardian, ARAMCO constitutes 12% of the world's total oil production; a figure which has certainly increased as other countries have progressed deeper into irreversible decline.

ARAMCO is the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major US oil companies. Another one of Aramco's partners is Chevron-Texaco which gave up one of its board members, Condoleezza Rice, when she became the National Security Advisor to George Bush. All of ARAMCO's key decisions are made by the Saudi royal family while US oil expertise, personnel and technology keeps the cash coming in and the oil going out. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields - 25% of all the oil on the planet.

It gets better.

According to a New York Times report on March 8th of this year, ARAMCO is planning to make a 25% investment in a new and badly needed refinery to produce gasoline. The remaining 75% ownership of the refinery will go to the only nation that is quickly becoming America's major world competitor for ever-diminishing supplies of oil: China.

Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO.

The Boston Globe reported that in 2001 ARAMCO had signed a $140 million multi-year contract with Halliburton, then chaired by Dick Cheney, to develop a new oil field. Halliburton does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia. Current estimates of Halliburton contracts or joint ventures in the country run into the tens of billions of dollars.

So do the fortunes of some shady figures from the Bush family's past.

As recently as 1991 ARAMCO had Khalid bin Mahfouz sitting on its Supreme Council or board of directors. Mahfouz, Saudi Arabia's former treasurer and the nation's largest banker, has been reported in several places to be Osama bin Laden's brother in law. However, he has denied this and brought intense legal pressure to bear demanding retractions of these allegations. He has major partnership investments with the multi-billion dollar Binladin Group of companies and he is a former director of BCCI, the infamous criminal drug-money laundering bank which performed a number of very useful services for the CIA before its 1991 collapse under criminal investigation by a whole lot of countries.

As Saudi Arabia's largest banker he handles the accounts of the royal family and - no doubt - ARAMCO, while at the same time he is a named defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 victim families against the Saudi government and prominent Saudi officials who, the suit alleges, were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Both BCCI and Mahfouz have historical connections to the Bush family dating back to the 1980s. Another bank (one of many) connected to Mahfouz - the InterMaritime Bank - bailed out a cash-starved Harken Energy in 1987 with $25 million. After the rejuvenated Harken got a no-bid oil lease in 1991, CEO George W. Bush promptly sold his shares in a pump-and-dump scheme and made a whole lot of money.

Knowing all of this, there's really no good reason why the CIA should be too upset, is there? It was only a long-term proprietary and deep-cover NOC - well established and consistently producing "take" from ARAMCO (and who knows what else in Saudi Arabia). It was destroyed with a motive of personal vengeance (there may have been other motives) by someone inside the White House.

From the CIA's point of view, at a time when Saudi Arabia is one of the three or four countries of highest interest to the US, the Plame operation was irreplaceable.

Third clue: Tenet's resignation, which occurred at night, was the first "evening resignation" of a Cabinet-level official since October 1973 when Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest of Richard Nixon's firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Many regard this as the watershed moment when the Nixon administration was doomed.

[Emit]

13. a.k.a. The Propaganda War Machine

Well, here's a report prepared for Waxman that would have been better titled "The Propaganda War Machine." We've all heard these statements that are highlighted in this report, but they have much greater impact when viewed, in retrospect, as a whole, and in relation to what FormerRepublican in his OP suggests.

In light of the recent brouhaha, that the treasonous "Turd Blossom outed Plame", and the resulting fallout, seems there's no denying that intelligence and facts, indeed, were being fixed around the policy...I knew that then, though, and I know that now. So, lest we should let some of the recent spin of MSM (and the constant spin of Rethugs) allow us to lose sight of the big picture...

Here's the Waxman (a.k.a.,"Propaganda War Machine") report which found 237 specific misleading
statements made by five top Bush & Co. officials responsible for "shaping public opinion on Iraq."


IRAQ ON THE RECORD: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S PUBLIC STATEMENTS ON IRAQ
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM — MINORITY OFFICE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the
nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President
Bush stated: “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not
live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of
mass murder.”

One year later, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration’s
assertions about the threat posed by Iraq. Prior to the war in Iraq, the President
and his advisors repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction that jeopardized the security of the United States. The failure to
discover these weapons after the war has led to questions about whether the
President and his advisors were candid in describing Iraq’s threat.

This report, which was prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a
comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration
officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public
opinion on Iraq: President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. It finds that the five officials made
misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 125 public appearances.
The report and an accompanying database identify 237 specific misleading
statements by the five officials.

<<snip>>

3. Claims about Uranium from Africa
Another significant component of the Administration’s nuclear claims was the
assertion that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Africa. As one of few new
pieces of intelligence, this claim was repeated multiple times by Administration
officials as proof that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. In
total, the five Administration officials made misleading assertions about Iraq’s
attempts to obtain uranium from Africa in 7 statements in 6 public appearances...
Cont'd here:

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/:

__________________________________________

And let's not forget WHIG:

Here's some info on WHIG, for those who may have missed it:

Quote:
The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

http://home.earthlink.net/~imfalse/depiction_threat_outgrew.html

more on WHIG here:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_9_35/ai_108314366
<<snip>>
If and when Congress launches its own investigation into these claims, you can be sure that subpoenas will go to those who participated in the White House Iraq Group. WHIG, as it is known, was formed by White House Chief of Staff Andy Card in August 2001 to help "educat the public" about Iraq's threat as The Washington Post's Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus reported in an exhaustive article this summer. The members of this group included communications aides Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley; plus I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
<<snip>>
________________________________________

[Emit]

14. Correcting two links on the previous posts

As I see they are not working. Sorry for that. (edit time has lapsed on both)

First, still_one's OP:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4110982&mesg_id=4110982


Second:
Iraq On The Record - The Bush Administration’s Public Statements On Iraq. (Waxman's requested report)
www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/IraqOnRecord.pdf

_____________________________________________________________________

[seemslikeadream]

15. Thanks

http://www.cursor.org.nyud.net:8090/images/iheartchalabi.jpg

[Al-CIAda]

16. .

:thumbsup:

[Zen Democrat]

17. June 2004: Miller subpoenaed, Chalabi disgraced, Tenet resigns

Does anyone think that Tenet didn't resign. That perhaps he was fired for spilling everything to Fitzgerald. Tenet was the guy who asked the Justice Department to appoint a Special Prosecutor.

All the leaks we have so far are coming from the White House to put their "best case" forward - pathetic as it is. We don't know what Fitzgerald has, but if Tenet talked then Fitz has everything. And all the testimony given by Bush, Cheney, Fleischer, Rove, Libby is known to be lies by the prosecutor. And the SP is just putting the finishing touches on the case.

If Tenet talked, it's all over for them, kids.

[indie_voter]

20. Remember how shaken * looked

When he announced Tenet's resignation?

Something happened the night before (Bush says Tenet talked with him the evening before Bush announced Tenet's resignation). What?

I don't understand the Medal of Freedom in this context though?

[eleny]

18. Cheney Ledeen Connections

See my posting in GD Politics about Ledeen, who may be connected to the falsified Italian documents.
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1933432

See the paragraph in an article - "Shouldn't Dick Cheney Be Impeached?"
I know it's a Larouche site! But the content talks about how Cheney and Ledeen are connected. I'm not a Larouche follower. Here's the snippet so no one has to go click the link.
"After he left the position of Secretary of Defense in the Bush "41" Administration, Cheney again hooked up with the Libby/Wolfowitz circle, joining the International Advisory Board of JINSA. JINSA was founded by three of Israeli intelligence's leading agents in America: Dr. Stephen Bryen, who was investigated for passing classified information to the Israelis from the Senate in 1978; Richard Perle; and Michael Ledeen. All three JINSA big-wigs were named as members of the circle known as the "X Committee" behind the espionage of the convicted spy for Israel, Jonathan Jay Pollard."
www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3021cheney_halli.html

[Emit]

19. You hit the nail on the head with this statement

"Why did Cheney bypass intelligence in talking to the INC? Because intelligence filters out false data, and he wanted false data treated as truth. But who was the fall guy when the info was proved false? The intelligence community for failing to vet it."

During the lead up to the Iraq war, Bush & Co. condemned the CIA for underestimating the Iraqi WMD threat. Then, when no WMD's were found (duh!), Bush & Co. blamed the CIA for overstating the WMD threat. So, Bush & Co. then purged those agents who they could not control or who were not willing to be their patsies.

Seems there are a lot of ex-CIA agents and other security employees on the outs now, openly criticizing Bush & Co. This could prove detrimental for Bush & Co. if these ex-CIA people decide to set the record straight. Wonder what power these ex-CIA, potential whistle blowers hold?
______________________________________________________________
Edited to add, this is a response I received from an acquaintance, MariAngela, who is writing a book on the propaganda during the leadup to the war. She has given me permission to use it for discussion on this matter. This is just a rough outline she posted:

As discussed on this board:
http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?p=233232#233232

"Thanks, Emit. This is what I am writing my book on but, because the war propaganda machine is so extense, I'm still amassing data. Below, just a preliminary outline of what it comprised, without inclusion of public relations firms, media, think tanks.

IRAQ WAR PROMOTION: COUNTRIES, LEADERS, AGENCIES

Look at neocon file here.

I. Countries Involved: United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Italy.
A. United States:
1. Vice President Dick Cheney: A long-time apostle of pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats to the USA, he was the decisive force pushing the invasion of Iraq. As former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill noted, Cheney and his aides were in the first days of 2001 "already planning the next war in Iraq and the shape of a post-Saddam country." It was Cheney who emasculated Colin Powell, cut the State Department out of effective policymaking, foisted fake reports on the intelligence agencies and supplanted the National Security Council. It was Cheney who placed appointees personally loyal to him, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in charge of the Pentagon and named desk officers culled from neoconservative Washington think tanks -- ideologues with no military experience . Even within the State Department, officials of Cheney's choosing -- not Powell's -- controlled the key positions when it came to maneuvering the United States into the Iraq war. "Even when there was a show of Defense listening to State, it was just one Cheney operative talking to another," says Greg Thielmann, a former member of the State Department Intelligence Agency. "We were simply bypassed from the start." Cheney was also a supporter of Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) with whom he met in Colorado a few days before he was given the Republican vice presidential nomination Iraqi (Sources: see Cheney, OSP files)
1. Staffers”
a. Eric Edelman, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush, Administration, became a top foreign policy adviser to Cheney, later Cheney’s national security adviser (neocon); Ambassador to Turkey from July 22, 2003.
2. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Elizabeth Cheney

II. U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND AGENCIES INVOLVED:
A. The White House:
1. NSC: National Security Council: Led by Condoleeza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley (See file on Condoleeza). Others: Elliott Abrams--Middle East director (neo-conservative)
2. Office of Global Communications (OGC): The Coalition Information Center (CIC) with offices in the London, Islamabad and the White House was established in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack. In 2003, the CIC morphed into the OGC, brainchild of Bush’s media adviser Karen Hughes in conjunction with UK Prime Minister Blair’s media mastermind, Alistair Campbell at 10 Downing Street. Its mission was to take over the State Department’s job of selling America abroad and especially the war on terror. Staffed by Tucker Eskew (who helped Bush win his no-holds-barred victory over John McCain in North Carolina, Dan Bartlett, Jeff Jones, Peter Reid, the OGC worked closely with the White House Iraq Group (WHIG). (see OGC file)

3. White House Iraq Group (WHIG): established in August 2002 by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff (SeeWHIG file)

4. The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB)—A 16-member board of civilians who report directly to the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies. The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as ”code word” that is higher than top secret. One of its members prior to the invasion of Iraq was Philip Zelikow (associated with Condoleezza Rice and later exec directo of 9/11 Commission) who advocated the invasion of Iraq. The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office (IPS 29 March 2004 in Iraq Intel file).

B. Department of Defense:
Under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s command, competent intelligence professionals were purged in order to ease the way to war. Douglas Feith, brought in under Rumsfeld to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, applied an ideological test to his staff: He didn't want competence; he wanted fervor (Col. Pat Lang, a Middle East expert who served under five presidents, Republican and Democratic, in key posts in military intelligence, recalls being considered for a job at the Pentagon. During the job interview, Feith scanned Lang's impressive resume. "I see you speak Arabic," Feith said. When Lang nodded, Feith said, "Too bad," and dismissed him) (Rolling Stone, T.D. Altman 9/904).
The Wolfowitz-Feith network: Wolfowitz set up a neocon network in the Pentagon composed of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith (appointed in February 2003), Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Rodman, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William J. Luti who reported to Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone who reported to Feith.

1. Douglas Feith: Reported to be the main architect of the faulty intelligence slanted to provide the White House with what it desired to obtain support for the invasion of Iraq. (See Feith file)

The Pentagon’s intelligence sources:
1. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines intelligence agencies
2. DIA--Defense Intelligence Agency: collects and provides information on foreign militaries. Unites defense intelligence community on major issues. Helps share information between commanders. DIA Director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby apparently not in on the information fabrication operation. A top-secret report by the DIA September 2002 concluded that it could find no evidence of chemical weapons activity in Iraq (DIA file)
3. NSA—National Security Agency: Director Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden. Makes and breaks secret codes. Conducts foreign language analysis. Analyzes intercepted communications (see CIA file).
4. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency: Director Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr.. Coordinates satellite-based monitoring and mapping for the Defense Department and provides maps, charts, aerial and satellite imagery and environmental information (Wash Post 18 Aug 04; CIA file)
5. OSP (Office of Special Plans)—Its precursor was OSI (Office of Strategic Influence) set up by Rumsfeld in late 2001 when he hired John Rendon, whose public relations organisation worked for the CIA in the early Nineties to help the Iraqi National Congress, to publicise Iraqi atrocities (another PR firm involved was Hill and Knowlton—see media-pr file). The Rendon Group worked with OSI to place stories, some of them fabricated, in the media to win support for the invasion against Iraq. OSI was closed down by Rumsfeld in February 2002 in response to protests that it was designed to spread misinformation (source: OSI file). OSP evolved from the Northern Gulf Affairs Office (NESA), which fell under the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia policy office. It was renamed and expanded to the Office of Special Plans in October 2002 to to handle prewar and postwar planning. Rumsfeld set up the OSP because he was not satisfied with the intelligence he was receiving from official govt agencies. Staffed by ideologues such as neocon Abram Shulsky (an expert on Russian disinformation techniques) and other Leo Strauss cultists, it was primarily Jewish and strongly Zionist. OSP was tasked with going over old ground on Iraq and showing that the CIA had overlooked the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Its primary objective was to look into the link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, focusing particularly on the data provided by Iraqi defectors. OSP developed a close working relationship with Ahmed Chalabi and the INC, giving the Pentagon’s pro-war leadership added leverage in its constant disputes with the State Department because of its direct connection to officials in the White House. OSP was overseen by Under-Secretary of Defense William Luti, a retired Navy captain, an early advocate of military action against Iraq. By the fall of 2002, the operation rivalled both the CIA and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. The OSP’s primary customers were Cheney, Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press (probably through the OGC), and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads, many of which were produced by Chalabi and the INC.
a. Ahmed Chalabi: A wily Iraqi businessman and opposition leader in exile, before Bush and Cheney took office he was closely tied to Wolfowitz, and neocon entrepreneur Richard Perle (first chairman and then member of the Defense Policy Board), and supported by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and former CIA director James Woolsey. Subsequently, Chalabi’s ties extended to others in the Bush administration, including Rumsfeld; Feith, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
b. Iraqi National Congress (INC): Led by Chalabi, it had was established by the CIA in 1992, the same year Chalabi was convicted in absentia of bank fraud in Jordan. Lavishly funded by the CIA which later discarded the INC as unreliable. The INC became the source of most of the unreliable and fabricated information provided by Iraqi “defectors.”Almost immediately after September 11th, INC began to publicize the stories of defectors who claimed that they had information connecting Iraq to the attacks (e.g. October 14, 2001, an interview conducted jointly by the Times and “Frontline,” Sabah Khodada, an Iraqi Army captain, said that the September 11th operation “was conducted by people who were trained by Saddam”).
c. John Rendon:
d. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon: OSP also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

C. State Department:
1. Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR): NOT INVOLVED. Its
Conclusions disagreed with information of other agencies re Iraq, but ignored by Gen. Colin Powell (NYT 19 July 2004)

C. CIA—Director George Tenet, under pressure from the hawks such as Cheney and Newt Gingrich, former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant," became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched, providing the OSP with reams of questionable data.

III. UNITED KINGDOM
A. Office of Prime Minister Tony Blair—Worked closely through Alistair Campbell with the White House’s pro-war efforts. Was directly connected with the White House’s OGC daily.
1. Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC): Worked out of the Prime Minister’s office.
B. Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC): Headed by chairman John Scarlett (recently appted chief of M16). Tony Blair told the Commons that JIC was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq. Composed of senior members of all UK's intelligence services. 'They were charged to get specific intelligence on WMD and to make a case for war,' a source said. 'But they were doing that on the say-so of politicians.' Received data provided by Operation Rockingham. This shoehorning of intelligence data to fit pre-fixed political goals, both in the US and the UK, throws light on the two most controversial elements of the UK’s Government's dossier of September 2002: that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes, and that was that Saddam tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Africa. Intelligence sources say the 45 minute claim was linked to Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC). Blair said that the claim that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger was 'judged by JIC at the time to be correct' though JIC blatantly ignored proof of Saddam's compliance. Intelligence sources say the Niger claim emanated from Italian Intelligence. The Italians had apparently been asked to help the US and UK make the case for war and passed the document to the British. (see Op Rock file)
C. MI6-UK intelligence agency headed by Sir Richard Dearlove (later retired) supplied skewed data to 10 Downing Street. The Butler Inquiry scored M16 for its sloppy use of sources. One MI6 "main source,"while reporting authoritatively on some issues, had simply been passing on what he had heard from "within his circle" on other issues. Reporting from a "sub source" to a second MI6 main source, which had led to important JIC assessments on Iraqi possession of chemical and biological weapons, "must be open to doubt", the report said. Reports from a third MI6 main source had been withdrawn as "unreliable" while reports from two further main MI6 sources which were regarded as reliable had been notably "less worrying" about Iraq's chemical and biological capabilities. A report from what was described as a "liaison service" on the Iraqi production of biological agents had been so "seriously flawed" that the grounds for the JIC's assessment that Iraq had recently produced stocks of biological agents no longer existed. Additionally, MI6 did not tell the Hutton inquiry - set up to investigate the death of the government scientist David Kelly - that crucial intelligence on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons was unsound. The security services, he said, felt it was "too sensitive'' to be made public. Dearlove also decided not to tell Blair. The Prime Minister's spokesman said Mr Blair only became aware of the withdrawal of the intelligence as a result of the inquiry by Lord Butler of Brockwell, which was delivered three days ago. All this is believed to be a whitewash to protect Blair (M16 file, Iraq Intelligence file).
D. Ministry of Defence:
1. Operation Rockingham: Was the counterpart of OSP. Said to be a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Established by the Defense Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defense in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD program and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. Institutionalized “cherry-picking” intelligence produced by UN inspections of Iraq that skewed UK intelligence about Iraq WMDS toward a preordained outcome in line with Blair government policy. Dealt with activities of the UN special commission (Unscom) through David Kelly, the weapons expert whose suicide led to the Hutton inquiry. Given Rockingham's penetration of Unscom at virtually every level, until the Un inspectors were withdrawn in March 2003, there existed a seamless flow of data from Iraq, through New York, to London, carefully shaped from beginning to end by people working not for the UN security council, but for the Blair government (Scott Ritter, Guardian 11/29/03; Neil McKay, Sunday Herald June 8, 2003).

III. ISRAEL: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
A. Intelligence: An ad hoc intelligence operation inside Sharon's office, bypassing Mossad, worked with the Pentagon’s OSP to provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

IV. ITALY: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
1. SISMI—The Italian foreign intelligence service said to have forged the Niger yellow cake documents and had arranged for them to be passed to Rocco Martino by an official of Niger's embassy in Rome. Martino claims he then passed the documents to French intelligence service (Mark Huband, Financial Times, 4 August 2004; coincides with data in Op Rockingham file)."