Friday, May 19, 2006

“You can't write anything honest"

* Ken Silverstein:
"A number of current and former intelligence officials have told me that the administration's war on internal dissent has crippled the CIA's ability to provide realistic assessments from Iraq. “The system of reporting is shut down,” said one person familiar with the situation. “You can't write anything honest, only fairy tales.”"
read the rest. it's frightening.

* let's flashback to Rod Barton of the ISG (from 2003/4):
"At one point, former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton says, a CIA officer told him it was "politically not possible" to report that the White House claims were untrue.
[]
Barton quotes the American head of the biological team.. "You don't understand how difficult it is to say anything different" from the public CIA line. In the second half of February 2004, the book says, the newly arrived senior CIA officer in the Iraq Survey Group — also unidentified — told Barton he couldn't mention the trailers in a report scheduled for March.
"I don't care that they are not biological trailers. It's politically not possible," Barton recalls him saying.""

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