Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came from Whitehouse

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I wonder how it is that this didn't hit the Alley already: Ron Suskind, in his new revalatory book, reports that a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. This is serious stuff - high crimes - impeachable offences, which explains the rabid Whitehouse responses to Suskind's book. It is at the very least domestic propaganda which is prohibited under US law.

The charges against Bush are that he, personally, ordered some documents forged and others ignored in order to lure the American people into support of a foreign war. That makes Clinton's difficulties with his libido look quite trivial. IMO impeachment should be initiated, to give Bush and Cheney a chance to clear their names, or, to deservedly fall.

Suskind interview on NPR.
Suskind: Sources of WH forgery claim now under pressure to deny it
Book says White House ordered forgery

 

No no, it is just osur grapes from a disgruntled former employee or if it isn't that it is just partisan attacks being waged at a time the nation must be united in the face of annihilation at the hands of the evil islamic-fascist terrorists!

You know the drill Ragusa, nothing will come of anything the Bush administration may have done. Half the American public don't care or refuse to believe even if they saw them eat live babies and the other half mostly seem to prefer to look the other way and hope it will all go away and the press is thoroughly housebreaked that even saying anything remotely negative about the administration is instatly shouted down and degraded to left-wing bias.

Wow, this must be one my most bitter posts ever.

 

Indeed BTA. I apparently over-read that, or forgot that I have read it:

not to mention this:

Hat tip, BTA, Chandos

 

I'm a bit confused here. This guy isn't a top CIA official, is he? He's a Wallstreet jounalist. He's published a number of books bashing Bush, and now this one. On top of that, I haven't heard anything either way from any of the people he claims he spoke with. So where does the title of this thread come from?

 

NOG,
don't be silly. Get that bias nonsense out of your system. Assess your information independent of the source.

'Bashing Bush' aside, he is a Pulitzer price winning journalist. Worse for you, Suskind has a track record of being right, much like Hersh btw. Faced with interestingly worded denials from the Whitehouse he was able to prove that what he was reporting was based on actual testimony. And if you read the Whitehouse denials carefully, you'll see that they are non denials. That is telling in itself. He didn't make this stuff up. Never mind FOX'es howling about his 'bias', you can bet that before publishing a story with accusations as grave, he triple checked his sources. That is because he wants to continue working in a job in which one lives by reputation, and access to sources based on that. How do you think did he get senior CIA officials to testify to such things on tape? Don't forget that for your convenience's sake.

The negative reporting on Bush's reign might just be because there may have been, still are, negative things going on

 

Ragusa - Good luck getting anything done about it though. I just don't get what's going on here. I thought this story would blow up. This IS a high crime (if true). Everyone is either sleepwalking or in denial - or both.

 

Or on vacation. Congress is currently out of session, and doesn't plan on returning until after Labor Day. High crime or not, we cannot expect our over-worked and under-paid members of Congress to cut short their well-deserved vacation. Of course, you'd think this would have made a bigger splash in the press. The only network I saw that even gave Suskind an interview was MSNBC, on the show Countdown, with Kieth Olbermann. While I like Countdown, I would have preferred to see him interviewed by a more moderate news station, like CNN.

 

Ragusa, now you're being silly.

I've neither seen nor heard much of anything on this. I did a quick google search on the name and came up that he was a Wallstreet reporter (won his awards on those articles, apparently), who subsequently wrote a bunch of books claiming inside knowledge of the Bush Administration.

My biggest question is this: how is a Wallstreet journalist so good at getting past the Whitehouse 'no comment' shield when reporters that specialize in just that can't? Basically, how did a Wallstreet journalist get these stories when no one else did?

My second question is: if this is true, why haven't we heard the tapes of CIA officials telling him about this? If it isn't, why hasn't he been called on proof? Why haven't the CIA officials he claims to quote come forward and said, 'I never said that'? Neither one makes sense.

Ragusa, between the title of the thread and you're response to my comment, it sounds like your logic is: this guy is bashing Bush and no one has shown him to the looney bin yet, so he must be 100% correct. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

 

NOG,

Actually, one of the questions that Kieth Olbermann asked Suskind was, "Why would you expect anyone to believe you? What proof do you have to offer when the administration comes out and denies these allegations?"

Suskind then claimed that he taped all of his interviews, and would be happy to supply copies or transcripts as needed to support his case. So, while I don't HOW he managed to get all this information, he was smart enough to make a record of it.

 

You know, if a certain Mrs. Pelosi wasn't such a prude, I'd invite you guys to my place over to watch the impeachment hearings. Popcorn would be on me

 

Suskind is good, reliable and discrete. Only that way he can get people to speak off and in particular on the record. The people who told him about this story did not violate the Whitehouse 'no comment shield' because they were not from the Whitehouse. They were not political loyalists but career people, that accounts for the different mentality. They appear genuinely appalled by what they reported to him. Suskind represented what they said correctly. That's why the Whitehouse couldn't prove him wrong on his presentation of the testimony. Considering that Suskind's sources are very likely right, the Bushies probably won't be able to prove them and Suskind wrong. What they can do is to blow fog. I'm pretty confident we'll see Suskind vindicated. Btw, Suskind will release some of his tapes and you can read the transcripts.

The 'denials' of his interview partners are remarkable: One of the CIA officials involved, Robert Richer, the agency's then-deputy director of clandestine operations, issued a statement this week denying Suskind's allegations. "I never received direction from George Tenet (CIA director at the time) or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document...," Richer said in a statement that was initially released by the White House.

As for how to blow fog, read this carefully. That was not a denial. Richer didn't say he never got such an order. He said he didn't receive such an order from Tenet or his chain of command. The right question is: Why is Richer so specific? The answer lies in the boldened part. He doesn't say anything about people other than Tenet or outside his chain of command. So when somebody other than Tenet or outside his chain of command gave him such an order Richer is technically not lying. That is probably why the Whitehouse suggested him to say that, or rather, armtwisted him into saying that. My hunch would be said order originated in either the Whitehouse or the Office of the Vice President.

 

Ok, those are some good answers. I'm still a little bit iffy about this guy being a Wallstreet journalist, but it's possible. As for the sources being carreer instead of political, that would seem to make it harder, as their bosses who can fire them are political.

I guess I'll wait for the tapes to be released.

 

It this impeachable? Of course it is. It violates several laws, as pointed out above. Will Cheney be impeached? Of course not; for several reasons. For one thing, the Republicans have 49 votes in the Senate, so conviction, which requires a 2/3 vote, is impossible. This makes it a political question: Should we impeach anyway, even though there can be no conviction? Reluctantly, I believe Pelosi has made the right choice: if conviction is impossible, there should be no impeachment. The possibility of smearing the Republicans still further is outweighed by the possibility of an unsuccessful impeachment rebounding upon the Democrats.

 

Cernak - While I can understand where you are coming from, it would seem to me that if the media was behind the story in a larger way, it would force the issue and, although it may not end in an impeachment, it may reflect back onto the Republicans as protecting any criminal activity by the Bushmen. It could further erode the Republican standing in Congress, who have our government in a deadlock of filabustering and other stalling tactics.

 

Chandos--Agreed. The silence, as you point out, is deafening.

 

Well, there were the Olympics and Georgia, then the Democratic Convention, and then the Republican Convention will follow, so there have been other news stories. We'll see what happens later. Did this guy ever release his tapes? What was the reaction?

 

Also, if this forged document, if it is real, led to the war etc. And the deaths of alot of iraqi people (deathtoll is around 600 000 now right?). That would make Bush worse than Saddam actually, and worse than alot of the other dictators as well.