CIA-Whistleblower: "To what extent did they try to align the facts?"

CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

Tuesday June 10, 2003 -The Guardian

The debunking of the Bush administration's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.

As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.

The charge of a link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam was contentious even at the time, and yesterday's report in the New York Times that the two al-Qaida members, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, dismissed the idea deepened the impression that Americans had been deliberately misled to support the decision for war...

...With the White House fighting for its credibility, the New York Times reported that the two al-Qaida lieutenants had dismissed the notion of cooperation between Saddam and Bin Laden.

That omission could prove extremely damaging to the administration because it suggests that officials ignored intelligence that did not fit with their plans for Iraq.

"This gets to the serious question of to what extent did they try to align the facts with the conclusions that they wanted," an intelligence official told the New York Times.

"Things pointing in one direction were given a lot of weight, and other things were discounted."

Flashback: Case Against Iraq a Fraud

Pravda.RU, 2002-10-10

"...As George Bush fantasized about "mushroom clouds" ..., intelligence experts around the world were shaking their heads in dismay. Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA Head of Counter-Intelligence, declared in an interview with the British newspaper, The Guardian, that "cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there is a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA."

...David Albright also declared that experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who had scorned these claims, had been instructed not to publicise their doubts about the veracity of the official line. An unnamed spokesperson working at the laboratory told journalists "The administration can say what it wants and we are expected to remain silent."

Another claim that there were high-level links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda are similarly warped. Suspected terrorist Abu Musab Zarqani, who had been arrested for his part in a plot to bomb tourist sites in Jordan in 2001, went to Baghdad for hospital treatment after his release. The CIA monitored his telephone conversations, none of which had any connection whatsoever with Iraqi authorities...

...It is crystal clear what has been happening; the Bush Administration has been deliberately creating a case against Saddam Hussein to use as a pretext for an attack. Disregarding any evidence which points to the contrary, exaggerating and twisting any lead that could be contrived to support the preconceived claim.

That a man in the position of George Bush (not to mention Tony Blair) can deliver a speech making such serious accusations based entirely upon conjecture and "cooked" facts is utterly incredible due to its shallowness, limited scope of vision, dangerous consequences and its sheer unilateral promotion of the hegemony of the United States of America over the world's resources.

If George Bush or Tony Blair had been speaking in any normal forum they could be accused of slander. Had they been speaking in a court of law they would be charged with perjury. As it is, in a world which gyrates egocentrically around the Bush Administration, the best that can be done is to call them liars..."

Agency had no firm Iraq evidence last fall
Boulder Daily Camera, CO - Jun 7, 2003
... are deciding whether to launch an independent investigation ... officials, intelligence
agencies had no direct evidence ... to support a firm conclusion about Iraq's

Pentagon had no weapons evidence
The Age, Australia - Jun 6, 2003
The Pentagon's intelligence agency had no hard evidence ... in stable condition," it said,
adding an investigation ... recent spate of deadly postwar accidents in Iraq ...

Defense Analysts Had No Hard Evidence on Iraqi Weapons
Voice of America - Jun 6, 2003
... News of the report coincides with a Senate investigation into ... repeatedly that it is
confident US forces in Iraq will eventually discover concrete evidence ...

Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?
CNN - Jun 6, 2003
... House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation. ... hopes they
finds WMDs or at least evidence ... is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq ...

Answers needed
Richmond Palladium Item, IN - Jun 8, 2003
... We have found little evidence of weapons of mass ... A careful investigation would give
the public a better idea ... and killing foreign citizens was necessary in Iraq ...

Revealed: The Secret Cabal Which Spun for Blair
Common Dreams - Jun 8, 2003
... allegations that intelligence on the threat from Iraq was ... said he would raise the
Sunday Herald's investigation ... Ritter has also offered to give evidence to ...

Where is the Outrage?
CounterPunch, CA - Jun 7, 2003
... is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation. ... be an army of
UN inspectors combing the countryside in Iraq or searching for evidence ...

Data didn't back Bush's weapons claims, officials say
San Jose Mercury News, CA - Jun 6, 2003
... of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council a month later
that extensive investigation "failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq

Iraqi trailers not used for WMD: report
ABC Online, Australia - Jun 7, 2003
... criticism that they have not found any evidence of ... year there was "no reliable information"
that Iraq ... on this question and through an independent investigation