Robert Scheer says CBS sat on the Drumheller story before the election

[kpete]

Posted on Apr. 25, 2006
By Robert Scheer

“The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.”
—Tyler Drumheller, formerly CIA’s top spy in Europe

Confession time: In fall 2004, during a crucial presidential election campaign, I made the mistake of playing by corporate media rules that amount to self-censorship.

Specifically, I joined other journalists in denying the public the right to learn of a definitive investigative report by CBS’ “60 Minutes” on President Bush’s disregard for the truth concerning the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat allegedly posed to the United States by Iraq. Having received an advance copy of the devastating segment, I honored CBS’ proprietary request not to write about the news it carried until after it aired.

Only, it never aired. CBS got cold feet, probably because of Dan Rather’s troubles over an unrelated story critical of the president. The suppressed story was solidly reported and, by exposing the Bush administration’s utter disregard for the truth concerning Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, should have been made available to the public before the November election. Now, no one seems to care.

.........................

Perhaps most damning is an interview, added for the broadcast version, with Tyler Drumheller, a CIA veteran of 26 years’ service who was the agency’s top spy in Europe until his retirement a year ago. According to him, before the war Hussein’s foreign minister had been “turned” and was talking secretly to U.S. intelligence. At first excited by this rare inside look at Hussein’s regime, the top dogs at the White House dropped the issue like a hot rock as soon as his information contradicted their overheated rationale for “preemptive” war. “The policy was set,” Drumheller told CBS correspondent Ed Bradley. “The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

That’s how more than three years later, after at least two major governmental investigations into prewar intelligence on Iraq and countless journalistic post-mortems, we are only just now finding out that a highly placed double agent in Iraq was poking a huge hole in the Hussein-as-WMD-bogeyman story.

more at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_prewar_intel_iraq_iran/

[jimshoes]

1. Isn't that what the Downing Street Minutes

were all about? Something about fixing the facts around the policy?

[Roland99]

2. Ayup, this pretty much verifies everything in the DSM.

[Poiuyt]

3. And the NY Times sat on the domestic spying story until after the

election also. This administration must have done some massive arm-twisting to keep these stories under wraps.

[GeorgeGist]

4. What a coincidence...

"Only, it never aired. CBS got cold feet, probably because of Dan Rather’s troubles over an unrelated story critical of the president."

Fortunate Son strikes again.

[wtmusic]

5. The strange thing was

we were demanding that Saddam prove he had no WMDs (an impossible feat). It was obvious to anyone paying attention that the war was going to happen, period. And the media did nothing.

[BillZBubb]

6. Actually, the media did plenty:

Plenty of cheerleading for the war!

[wtmusic]

8. I stand corrected

:thumbsup:

[peacetalksforall]

7. It is more and more evident - corporations have no respect for U.S.

citizens. We are nothing to them except people who need to be manipulated, kept quiet, and paying taxes - to make up for taxes they avoid paying.

This is the United States of Corporations. We are peons to them. Stupid ones who believe their lies and distortions.