(update: i interviewed Larisa - see part 1 and part 2)
Larisa's latest article in Raw Story makes it clear that it is just one of a series of related stories, ranging from:
1. Bush restricting intelligence access to congress' Gang of Eight, with Pat Roberts controlling the bottleneck and blocking investigations
2. The shenanigans of Feith, Perle, Cambone, Hadley and Rumsfeld and Chalabi in the NSC, DoD and OSP and AIPAC et al and attempts to plant WMD in Iraq
3. The Niger forgeries and Ledeen, Ghorbanifahr, and other assorted dodgy stories, including an attempt to suggest that Iran was stealing enriched uranium from Iraq
4. Plame's work in Iran, and the apparently intentional outing of her and her work - setting back intelligence about Iran by a decade.
Here are the stories, in order. I suggest you read them all, in full, in one sitting.
1. August11: "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq"
2. August11 (pt2): "Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats"
3. December 2 "Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"
4. Jan5 "Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq..."
5. Jan11 "Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels"
6. Jan17 "American (Ledeen) who advised Pentagon says he wrote for magazine that found forged Niger documents"
7. Jan 30 "Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk (Feith) stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence"
8. Feb13: "Outed CIA officer (Plame) was working on Iran..."
I've excerpted (very) liberally from them all below - but before we get to that, let's remember some things.
1. Sibel accuses Feith and Perle of being guilty of narcotics trafficking, arms trafficking (including nuclear) and somehow being complicit in 911
2. Sibel points to Wilson and Plame for reasons that aren't entirely clear, although she specifically highlights the connection with Turkey, and the AmericanTurkish Council.
3. "The Gang of Eight" is composed of the House speaker (Hastert) and minority leader (Pelosi), the Senate majority (Frist) and minority leaders (Reid), and the chairmen and ranking minority members (Hoekstra & Harman) of the House and Senate (Roberts and Rockefeller) intelligence committees.
4. In 2001, the Gang was Hastert, Gephardt, Daschle, Lott, Bob Graham, Shelby, Goss & Pelosi. (Note that Goss is now the head of the CIA, and is desperately screaming "Whistleblowers are Evil")
5. Hastert is apparently in the pocket of the Turkish mafia via the ATC, and Jack Abramoff amongst others
6. Pat Roberts is currently getting slammed by everyone, and even surprised himself this week by pretending not to roll-over.
7. Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz have previously been suspected of leaking information to AIPAC, and are again.
8. Perle recruited Feith and Wolfowitz into the DoD.
9. AIPAC and the neocons are desperate to invade/attack Iran.
10. Neocon Central is the Office of Vice President
11. Sibel says " the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today, is just touching the surface of it. It's going only to a certain degree. It doesn't go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that's... as far as I can explain."
12. Sibel says: "You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us."
13. Sibel also says "The Department of State is easily the most corrupted of the major government agencies." - Note that Brent Scowcroft, Joe Wilson and Marc Grossman are all State Department careerists who were also actively involved in Turkey and the ATC.
14. Also keep in mind that Sibel points to the head of Pakistan's ISI General Mahmoud Ahmed (who financed Atta) who met with Grossman, Goss, Tenet, Armitage and Powell during the week of 911.
With all that in mind, here are many liberal snippets of Larisa's articles (apologies to Larisa in advance again, I suggest that you go to the source)
Larisa's first piece comes on August11:
"Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq"---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.[snip]
The order is aimed at protecting "military security" and "sensitive law enforcement."
But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.Coupled with limited access to intelligence documents, RAW STORY has found that Roberts and a handful of other strategically-placed Washington players stymied all questions into pre-war intelligence on Iraq and post-invasion cover-ups, including the outing of a CIA covert agent, by using targeted leaks and artfully deflecting blame from the White House.[snip]
Timeline: How Roberts helped fix pre-war intelligence In a sense, the pre-invasion of Iraq and the post-invasion intelligence blame game can be seen through the lens of a chess game, with the pieces in place well before any troops set foot on the ground.
Roberts appears to become an extension of the White House in selling the war beginning in January 2003. That month, he is appointed to chair the Senate Intelligence Committee, picking up one of the eight coveted clearances.
[snip]
Roberts embraces a larger pro-war role. His voice is joined by Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
[snip]
Shortly thereafter, the Administration hits a snag: Documents alleging Iraq’s intention to reconstitute its nuclear program by purchasing uranium from Niger are publicly acknowledged to be forgeries.
[snip]Roberts blocks Niger questions
Whether Roberts actually saw the Niger forgeries during Hadley’s briefings is unclear. What is clear is that by March of 2003, the Intelligence chairman was in a position to head off any serious investigation into concerns raised by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the committee's ranking Democrat and vice-chair.
Rockefeller has grave concerns about deceptive intelligence, so serious that he pens a formal letter to FBI director Robert Mueller.
Rockefeller urges Mueller to investigate the Niger forgeries as part of what he feared to be "…a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq," writes the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.
[snip]Roberts blocks WMD questions
Roberts also figures prominently in warding off bipartisan efforts to investigate WMD in Iraq - the reason given by the Bush administration for going to war.
Larisa's second piece, also Aust11 (pt2):
"Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats"
Niger forgeries and WMDS – Roberts fingers CIAAs more questions surface on the Administration's lies about WMD and forged Niger documents, Roberts becomes a staunch Bush defender, deflecting pre-war "failures" away from the White House and pinning all blame on the CIA.
On July 11, 2003 - five days after former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes an article for the New York Times challenging the White House claim of Niger uranium sales to Iraq, Roberts issues a statement:
"What now concerns me most," he remarks, "is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the President."Ironically, on the same day that Roberts issues his statement, CIA chief George Tenet takes full responsibility for the uranium claim and its insertion in the State of the Union.
What follows is a bizarre war of departments as the CIA and the White House duke it out. The latter's campaign is abetted by Roberts in the Senate, Goss in the House and Hadley and John Bolton at State.
Three days after the Roberts volley at the CIA and Tenet's apology for the uranium claim in the President's State of the Union, CIA covert asset Valerie Plame Wilson -- wife of Joseph Wilson -- is outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The leak seems aimed at both Wilson and his wife, as a part of carefully orchestrated strategy on the part of senior White House officials.
In late September 2003, now-CIA director Porter Goss, acting in his capacity as then chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, concludes that the CIA is to blame for Iraq pre-war intelligence failures.
Like Roberts, Goss is said to be "...under the spell of Vice-President Dick Cheney and that his presence on the joint 9/11 inquiry gave the administration a deal of protection."
The following day, the CIA asks the Department of Justice to investigate the Plame outing.
Fixing the fix: Leaks and blame games
In July 2003, two astonishing political strategies merge: Hadley takes responsibility for the Niger statements -- though CIA Director Tenet has already done so -- and on the same day, Roberts calls Hadley to testify in pre-war intelligence failures.
"We have made an inquiry with the National Security Council, with [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice and asked to meet with Mr. Hadley and any other person that might be of particular interest to us," Roberts says. "So we will be in the business of taking a hard look at that."
[snip]
What follows is a series of White House salvos, aimed at Senate Democrats, the CIA and policy skeptics, aiming to shift blame away from the Administration. Classified documents and smears become White House tools of choice.
First, blame the CIA
[snip]
Rockefeller publicly questions Roberts efforts' in clearing the Administration of wrongdoing.
[Roberts was trying to] "lay all of this out on the intelligence community and never get to any other branches of government; in particular the White House and associated high and visible government agencies," Rockefeller told Knight Ridder.
[snip]
Second, blame the Democrats
[snip]Finally, blame Wilson and close the books
[snip]
Republicans embed Roberts' false assertion that Valerie Wilson sent her husband to Niger in talking points and media fodder. Although both Wilson and the CIA correct the record, Roberts, White House staff and others continue to make the charge.
Roberts pitches the case for closing the book on the lead-up to war.
"I don't think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence," he quips. "I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further."
Now, blame Fitzgerald
[snip]
In July of this year, Roberts frames the Plame outing as not really the outing of a covert agent.
"I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," he tells CNN.
[snip]All eyes are now on Fitzgerald's probe."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larisa's third piece, December 2:
"Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phase II, the follow-up to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq, is still facing opposition from administration officials and has seen little action from the committee’s chairman, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), RAW STORY has learned.
[snip]Senior Democratic Senate aides familiar with the task force’s activities say Republicans are stonewalling. One aide, who asked not to be named citing the secrecy of the investigation, explained that without the power of subpoena, Democrats are left with few options. “Phase II is dead,” the staffer said.
[snip]Key Areas of Focus
Phase II is the second part of a larger investigation into pre-war planning and post-invasion failures. Phase I focused primarily on intelligence failures by the CIA, while Phase II focuses on five specific areas of inquiry:
[snip]
4. Any intelligence activities relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and
5. The use by the Intelligence Community of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).
Feith and the Office of Special Plans
Part of the delay is due to resistance from the Pentagon regarding its ultra-secretive Office of Special Plans (OSP). The group was set up by then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Doug Feith. OSP was considered by many Defense Department officers and staff to be highly paranoid, secretive cabal of ideologues bent on creating a war with Iraq.
The group was tasked with finding intelligence that fit the administration’s anti-Iraq policy.
The Pentagon has specifically refused to address Feith's role and the activities of OSP.
Members of OSP included Larry Franklin, now charged with conspiracy to leak classified and defense information to a Washington pro-Israel lobby; Iran Contra player Michael Ledeen, hired by Feith as a consultant; and Harold Rhode, a staunch anti-Muslim said to have been directly involved in purging the DOD of anyone opposing the anti-Iraq policy who Feith also brought on as a consultant.
Other, “visiting,” players in the group included the now-discredited German intelligence source , “Curveball”; Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who fed bogus intelligence to the Pentagon and U.S. papers; and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who conveyed Chalabi’s falsehoods to the American body politic.
Under orders from Feith, Ledeen, Rhode and Franklin made un-authorized trips to meet with Manucher Ghorbanifar, another Iran Contra figure, in Rome and Paris in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The meetings have yet to be explained, but some suspect they are linked to the Niger forgeries.
More documents are needed
Democratic senators on the Phase II task force have requested interviews and documents from Feith’s office regarding Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress and “Curveball,” but have been denied access.
[snip]An earlier RAW STORY investigation of Roberts revealed a pattern of collusion with the Vice President’s office not only in stalling the investigation of pre-war intelligence, but also in thwarting inquiries into allegations of torture by the US military, the Niger forgeries and the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
[snip]Some insiders question whether the Office of Special Plans, and Feith in particular, violated the 1947 National Security Act.
[snip]“If Feith’s office was running intelligence activities that were unauthorized or not in compliance with this National Security Act and other legal requirements, then the activity may have been unlawful,” a source said. [snip]
Larisa's fourth piece, jan5:
"Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq, intelligence sources say"---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New allegations indicate that American civilian military leadership may have used an off-book quasi-military team to address political issues, placing those concerns above securing peace in the region, RAW STORY has learned.
[snip]Task Force 20 and other units
The primary operational team responsible for the early activity on the ground in Iraq was Task Force 20, which was comprised of CIA, FBI, Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group. Task Force 20 consisted of roughly a 40-man assault team and a private aviation unit provided by Special Operations Command. Sources believe this was the team tasked with the three objectives of securing the fallen pilot, the weapons, and the dictator.
Other groups operating at this same time included the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a unit of roughly 900 specialists, made up of smaller tactical teams, who followed on the heels of TF20. Judith Miller was embedded with one of the units of the 75th.
Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to and after combat operations began. Under the supervision of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy. According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently under investigation by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
But the lines between what were considered sanctioned forces and those considered almost as rogue units began to blur shortly after the invasion. Whether this was done deliberately to misrepresent official military, CIA, and other operations missions in the region, or whether this confusion stems from a lack of coordination remains unknown.
[snip]Sources raised most concern about an alleged off-book 4-5 man team which operated in the summer through the fall of 2003. What this team was doing and under whose authority it operated is unclear.
Yet at least one source close to the UN Security Council tells RAW STORY that the smaller team was acting on behalf of Office of Special Plans and Defense Department leadership, specifically under the guidance of Feith and in tandem with Cambone.
[snip]Secret team looked to ‘solve’ WMD problem?
This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.
During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.
“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”
The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.
“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,” the source added.
Former and current US intelligence officers explain that such forensics is essential and would have in fact proved if a weapons stash found was using Iraqi methodology. [snip]
Larisa, Part Five, jan11:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels"
Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003.The story that was peddled -- which detailed how an Iranian intelligence team infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war in March of 2003, and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program -- was part of an attempt to implicate both countries in a WMD plot. It later emerged that the Iranian exile was trying to collect money for his tales, sources say.
By all credible accounts, the source of this dubious tale was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who used middle-men and cut-outs to create the appearance of several sources. Ghorbanifar played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal that threatened to take down the Reagan administration, in which the U.S. sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan militants.
[snip]"Ali provided information that indicated Iranian intelligence had sent a team to Baghdad to extract highly enriched uranium (weapons grade) from a stockpile hidden by Saddam Hussein," one intelligence source said.
Ali asserted that an Iranian intelligence team had infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program, sources say.
Ghorbanifar said "the team successfully extracted the stockpile but on the way back to Iran contracted radiation poisoning," one source remarked.
[snip]Sources say that this second investigation resulted in another wild goose chase. The question of motive, however, seems to either have been entirely missed or simply glossed over.
[snip]Neoconservative Leeden explains meetings
Ghorbanifahr has strong ties to Michael Ledeen, and both of them were involved in a controversial meeting in Rome of 2001. That meeting, whose purpose is unknown, included high level officials in Italian intelligence, Iranian nationals and Larry Franklin, a former Defense Department analyst who current pled guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Also in attendance was Middle East expert Harold Rhode, also under investigation for charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Both Rhode and Franklin worked for Feith in the Office of Special plans.
Ledeen was consulting for OSP when all three were dispatched to Rome in 2001. He says the meetings had nothing to do with Iraq.
[snip]According to James Risen's New York Times article dated December of 2003, Ledeen was a paid consultant to the National Security Council at the time of the meeting. Risen reports that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was informed of the plans for the meeting and that Hadley expressed reservations given Ledeen and Ghorbanifahr's background.
The Office of Special Plans, however, authorized the meeting without notifying any other agency, violating protocol. They did not notify the Rome CIA station chief or the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Mel Sembler.
Ledeen, however, says that Hadley had authorized the trip. This would also implicate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-National Security Advisor.
[snip]The uranium story peddled to Weldon is strikingly similar to the story told to Ledeen.
[snip]
Ledeen says his source then went on to explain that the "stash" was buried in an underground facility and recounted, much like Weldon did, that neither the CIA, the Defense Department or the State Department would listen to his concerns.
[snip]Who arranged the meetings and their ultimate purpose remains unclear. One intelligence official, however, described the series of events and the market of intelligence trafficking as follows: "If you were going to launder intel to make up a war, you could easily send some fool on an errand." [snip]
larisa, Part 6, jan17 :
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------"American who advised Pentagon says he wrote for magazine that found forged Niger documents"
A controversial neoconservative who occasionally consulted for the Bush Defense Department has confirmed that he was a contributor to the Italian magazine Panorama, whose reporter first came across forged documents which purported that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Niger.The bogus documents became the basis for the infamous sixteen words in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, in which he detailed his case for war. Their origin has been one of the most persistent mysteries in how American intelligence on Iraq was so wrong.
In an email to RAW STORY, occasional Bush foreign affairs advisor Michael Ledeen confirmed that he was, "several years ago," a regular contributor to Panorama. Leeden would not provide more specificity.
[snip]A closer look at the series of overlapping relationships and events, however, suggests that Ledeen may have been connected, even if inadvertently, to the Niger forgeries.
Panorama has been in the crosshairs since late 2002, when one of its journalists, Elisabetta Burba, was handed a set of documents -- including contracts -- purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had purchased 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger. These documents were critical in supporting the administration's claims that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.
[snip]"The thing that was so embarrassing about the episode was not simply that the documents were forgeries, but that they were clumsy forgeries, as was so quickly determined by the IAEA," Pike said. "It is one thing to be taken in, but to be so easily taken in suggests either bewildering incompetence or intentional deception, or possibly both."
[snip]After investigating the documents for an article and finding them to be suspect, Burba suggested to her editor, Carlo Rossella, that she take a trip to Niger to investigate further. Rossella diverted her to the U.S. embassy in Rome instead. She never ran the article. Burba dropped off the forgeries to the US embassy on Oct. 9, 2002.
But as Burba was investigating the veracity of the documents, head of Italian intelligence Nicolo Pollari was meeting with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
The meeting, which took place in September 2002, is alleged to be brokered by Ledeen, although the only U.S. official Pollari claims to have met is George Tenet, whom he also met in October 2001. Questioned about the meeting, Hadley has said no one involved in the meeting had "any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed."
Burba delivered the forgeries to the U.S. embassy a month after the Pollari and Hadley meeting.
Questions also surround Burba's attempts to authenticate the documents.
Speaking to RAW STORY, foreign intelligence sources say they wonder why she delivered documents she felt to be bogus to the U.S. embassy. These sources say there are two questions surrounding Burba's account: If she did indeed find the documents to be forgeries, why did she take them to an embassy as opposed to her own authorities -- and why did she deliver them to the U.S. embassy specifically?
It was Burba's editor at Panorama, Carlo Rossella, who allegedly told her to take the documents to the U.S. embassy, despite her own requests to travel to Niger to further investigate the claims.
[snip]
Rosella, intelligence sources say, could have been acting on the orders of Panorama's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's equivalent of Rupert Murdoch. Berlusconi -- who also happens to be the current Prime Minister -??? was a supporter of President Bush leading up to the war.
Berlusconi was not immediately available for comment. [snip]
Larisa, Part Seven, jan 30 :
"Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence"The second part of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence is still being held up by an internal Pentagon investigation of Douglas Feith, one of the war's leading architects, RAW STORY has learned.
[snip]
More broadly, a RAW STORY investigation has found that Feith's access to classified information and his alleged wrongdoing can likely be laid at the feet of more senior officials in the Bush Administration -- namely Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who would have had to have overruled Pentagon background checks to reissue Feith's clearances after he was booted from the National Security Council for allegations of espionage in the mid 1980s.
[snip]Senate and intelligence sources say that although the Phase II investigation into Iraq pre-war intelligence is stalled, the real issue is a "revolving door" policy which allowed a coterie of Iraq war hawks to shuttle in and out of the Pentagon despite their involvement in myriad intelligence-related scandals.
At the heart of the Senate Intelligence Committee's delay is the fact that Feith and the Defense Department refuse to provide documents and witnesses to the Committee. Senate sources say that Feith and the Pentagon have made the case that they will not share any information until the Senate provides them with full documentation of what the investigation is looking into, documentary evidence that Senate staff have acquired, and any other key findings that Feith's lawyers believe should be made available to them.
[snip]But according to Senate sources, instead of forcing the release of documents, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KN) has deferred to the Pentagon's Inspector General, allowing the Pentagon to investigate itself, Feith and its clandestine Office of Special Plans.
[snip]This lack of oversight has caused great concern among many former military and intelligence sources. One former intelligence source point to "a bigger can of worms" that a Feith investigation may unravel, pointing to the Israeli spy case -- in which Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin passed classified information to a pro-Israeli lobby -- and to the Defense Department's own inability to address security breaches.
Franklin and AIPAC
Much of the current concern over security breaches stems from the case of Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Larry Franklin, who has recently plead guilty to passing classified information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). But Franklin seems to be a new face on the block when one considers the past involvement of higher level officials. Some intelligence sources have described Franklin as a "patsy" who is to take the fall for a much more insidious history and questionable activities by more senior officials.
The Franklin leak is hardly an isolated incident.
In 1978, the current head of the World Bank and former Deputy Defense Secretary Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was investigated for passing classified information through AIPAC, the same organization that Franklin is charged with passing state secrets to.
Wolfowitz, who at the time was working for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), was himself brought in by yet another high level alleged leaker, Richard Perle. Perle, too, is being investigated in the current AIPAC case.
Perle, who most recently served as chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board and quietly resigned after the AIPAC case broke, was alleged to have passed on highly classified information to the Israeli embassy when he was a foreign policy aide for Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson in 1970.
Perle was instrumental in bringing Feith into several positions, starting in the early 80s. By the mid-1980s Feith was relieved of his clearances for allegations of passing secrets to AIPAC, bringing the question of clearances full circle.
Rumsfeld seen to reinstate clearances
Despite their checkered past, Rumsfeld's Pentagon reissued clearances to Feith, Perle and Wolfowitz. Clearances were also issued to several of Feith's consultants, some of whom were major players in the Iran Contra scandal.
[snip]
Feith's team of consultants included such Iran Contra luminaries as Michael Ledeen and his go-to Iran arms merchant, Manucher Gorbanifar.
One former intelligence source said only an official of Rumsfeld's seniority could reissue clearances after they had been revoked. [snip]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larisa, Part Eight, feb13:
"Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say"
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.
While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.
[snip]The damages
Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.
Plame's team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan's network in the course of her work on Iran.
[snip]One former counterintelligence official described the CIA's reasons for not seeking Congressional assistance on the matter as follows: "[The CIA Leadership] made a conscious decision not to do a formal inquiry because they knew it might become public," the source said. "They referred it [to the Justice Department] instead because they believed a criminal investigation was needed."
The source described the findings of the assessment as showing "significant damage to operational equities."
[snip]Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to "ten years" in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson's identity.
A.Q. Khan
While Plame's work did not specifically focus on the A.Q. Khan ring, named after Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the network and its impact on nuclear proliferation and the region should not be minimized, primarily because the Khan network was the major supplier of WMD technology for Iran.
[snip]
The United States forced the Pakistan government to dismiss Khan for his proliferation activities in March of 2001, but he remains largely free and acts as an adviser to the Pakistani government.
[snip]
"It slowly dawned on them that the collaboration between Pakistan, North Korea and Iran was an ongoing and serious problem," Pike said. "It was starting to sink in on them that it was one program doing business in three locations and that anything one of these countries had they all had."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan became the United States' chief regional ally in the war on terror.
The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame's work raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House's decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran's possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration. [snip]
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Again, great work by Larisa (and Raw Story), can you join the dots?
The penny hasn't quite dropped for me.
I've long argued that Brewster Jennings was intentionally outed. Let's presume that is true. The three relevant questions seem to be: 1) by whom? 2) why? 3) why in July 2003?I'll try to unravel it all in a later post.
2 comments:
Nice post. (i'll admit i haven't read all of Larissa's articles yet, but i plan to).
Have you seen her interview from today with michael Ledeen?
thanks OnShakedown.
yeah - i saw the ledeen thing - am looking fwd to the rest of it
i'll have mush more on Larisa's series soon
cheers
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