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Coming Soon! From Common Courage Press Recent Stories July 25, 2003 Francis A. Boyle Impeaching Bush David Krieger 15 Questions Harvey Wasserman Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah Steve Dunifer Seize the Airwaves! Dan Bacher Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River Kurt Nimmo Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay Steve Perry Bush's Wars Weblog Website of the Day Stop the Wall!   July 24, 2003 Elaine Cassel Ashcroft Loses...Again Robert Fisk The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The US Torture Camp in Iraq David Lindorff Dumb and Dumber in Iraq Christopher Brauchli Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in Puerto Rico David Vest Dylan in Bend Tom Turnipseed Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops Douglas Valentine A Nation of Assassins Stew Albert Contract Killing Steve Perry Bush's Wars Weblog Website of the Day Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners July 23, 2003 Uri Avnery Caesar's Favor David Lindorff Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft Rebuked Mano Singham Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists Steve Perry Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies John Stanton Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope? Patrick Bond Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission Harry Browne A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman Paul Beaulieu When the WTO Comes to Montreal Robert Fisk The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance Will Grow William Witherup Georgie Porgie Website of the Day Lieberman & Falwell: True Love at Last July 22, 2003 Diane Christian Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces; Peace Frees Jeremy Brecher Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran Steve Kretzmann and Jim Vallette Plugging Iraq into Globalization Sam Smith Greening the Golden Triangle James Plummer Smile, You're on Federal Camera Lucretia Stewart This Day Shall Not Define My Life: January 18, 2003 Website of the Day Iraq Coalition Casualties   July 21, 2003 Edward Said Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping of Arabs Ron Jacobs Shut Up and Shoot Allan J. Lichtman Why is George Bush President? Elaine Cassel How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq Christopher Brauchli History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment Camps Bruce Jackson Third and Arizona, Santa Monica Website of the Day John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim by Claim   July 19 / 20, 2003 Arthur Mitzman Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable Than the Dot.com Bubble? Julian Bond We Shall be Heard Cynthia McKinney Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad Mel Goodman What is to be Done with the CIA? Jason Leopold Tenet Blames Wolfowitz Mickey Z. History Forgave Churchill Doug Giebel Impeachment as the Message Jon Brown Whipping the Post Mano Singham Cheney's Oil Maps Steven Sherman Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC Robin Philpot Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters Khaldoun Khelil Capturing Friedman Jeffrey St. Clair You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed Lenni Brenner Sitting in with Mingus Vanessa Jones Three Dog Night Adam Engel Video Judas Video Poets' Basement Foley, Smith and Curtis Website of the Weekend Illegal Art   July 18, 2003 David Vest Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo Rahul Mahajan Deceit Runs Deep John Chuckman Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World Harold A. Gould The Bush-Musharraf Conclave Alvaro Angarita In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists David Grenier Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island Dave Lindorff Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal Website of the Day Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair   July 17, 2003 Ron Jacobs Sometimes Even the President of the United States Has to Stand Naked Lisa Walsh Thomas Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance Martin Schwarz Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation Watchdogs Heidi Lypps Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced Drugging and the Supreme Court Norman Madarasz Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance Conference Pankaj Mehta Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Marjorie Cohn Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the Boy Who Cried Wolf Hammond Guthrie (Dis) Intelligence Revisited Website of the Day No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism July 16, 2003 Jason Leopold Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims William Cook Defining Terrorism from the Top Down Elaine Cassel Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom Must Not Be Obeyed Jason Leopold How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found? Linda Heard Bondage or Freedom? Raymond Barrett From Detroit to Basra Jeffrey St. Clair Back to the Future in Guatemala: The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt   July 15, 2003 Kathleen and Bill Christison Why We Resigned from VIPS Elaine Cassel Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers: the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack Chris Floyd Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries Jason Leopold CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries Gaius Publius Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please John Troyer The Niger Syndrome Becky Gillette No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David Orrr Uri Avnery The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb Website of the Day Cost of Iraq War   July 14, 2003 Lisa Taraki Hot Days in Ramallah Walter Brasch Bush: the Pretend Captain SOA Watch Training Colombia's Killers in the US Dan Bacher Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Intelligence Unglued Website of the Day Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties July 12 / 13, 2003 Arthur Mitzman The Double Wall Before the Future Standard Schaefer The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson John Feffer A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang Ron Jacobs Shades of Gray in Iran Elaine Cassel Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights Tom Stephens Civil Liberties After 9/11 David Lindorff New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On" Jason Leopold The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11 Lee Sustar What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia? Mickey Z. AIDS Dissent and Africa Sam Hamod Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group Ramzy Baroud Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket Jeffrey St. Clair Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller Adam Engel Parable of the Lobbyist Robert Sanders A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream Poets' Basement Albert, Witherup, Guthrie   July 11, 2003 Conn Hallinan The Coin of Empire Tim Wise God Responds to Bush Mokhiber / Weissman The Two Faces of Bush in Africa Edward S. Herman Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor David Orr Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation? David Lindorff An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary Website of the Day Dead Malls   July 10, 2003 Ron Jacobs Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody Profits of General Dynamics Sean Donahue Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia Yemi Toure Who Outted Bush in Afrika? Robert Jensen Politics and Sustainability: an Interview with Wes Jackson Ali Abunimah US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated Joanne Mariner Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions Website of the Day Electronic Iraq   July 9, 2003 David Lindorff Is the Media Finally Turning on Bush? David Krieger and Angela McCracken 10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons Mickey Z. Why Speak Out? Lee Sustar The Great Medicare Fraud John Chuckman The Worst Kind of Lie Gary Leupp "Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq Website of the Day Hail to the Thief: Songs for the Bush Years   July 8, 2003 Elaine Cassel Bully on the Bench: the Pathological Dissents of Scalia Alan Maass Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor Chris Floyd Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag Linda S. Heard America's Kangaroo Justice Brian Cloughley They Tell Lies to Nodders Charles Sullivan Bush the Christian? Saul Landau The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age Website of the Day Occupation Watch   July 7, 2003 William Blum The Anti-Empire Report Harvey Wasserman The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head Ramzy Baroud Peace for All the Wrong Reasons Simon Jones What Progressives Should Think About Iran Lesley McCulloch Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh Uri Avnery The Draw Steve Perry Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3   July 4 / 6, 2003 Patrick Cockburn Dead on the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass What is Freedom to a Slave? Martha Honey Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation and Neglect Jeffrey St. Clair The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture Standard Schaefer Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004 Lenni Brenner Jefferson is for Today Elaine Cassel Fucking Furious on the Fourth Ben Tripp How Free Are We? Wayne Madsen A Sad Independence Day John Stanton Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War Jim Lobe Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment John Blair Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke Lisa Walsh Thomas Heavy Reckoning at Qaim David Vest Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite Adam Engel Queer as Grass Poets' Basement Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair Website of the Weekend The Lipstick Librarian   Hot Stories Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Elaine Cassel Civil Liberties Watch Michel Guerrin Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" Uzma Aslam Khan The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go Paul de Rooij Arrogant Propaganda Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

July 26, 2003 The Pentagon's War Machine CIA Probe Points to the Office of Special Plans By JASON LEOPOLD A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq. The former CIA agents were asked to examine prewar intelligence last year by CIA Director George Tenet and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. They will present a final report to the Pentagon and CIA and possibly Congressional and Senate commitees later this year. The ad-hoc committee, called the Office of Special Plans, headed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other Pentagon hawks, described the worst-case scenarios in terms of Iraq's alleged stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and claimed the country was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, according to four of the CIA agents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the information is still classified, who conducted a preliminary view of the intelligence. The agents said the Office of Special Plans is responsible for providing the National Security Council and Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld with a bulk of the intelligence information on Iraq's weapons program that turned out to be wrong. But White House officials used the information it received from the Office of Special Plans to win support from the public and Congress to start a war in Iraq even though the White House knew much of the information was dubious, the CIA agents said. For example, the agents said the Office of Special Plans told the National Security Council last year that Iraq's attempt to purchase aluminum tubes were part of a clandestine program to build an atomic bomb. The Office of Special Plans leaked the information to the New York Times last September. Shortly after the story appeared in the paper, Bush and Rice both pointed to the story as evidence that Iraq posed a grave threat to the United States and to its neighbors in the Middle East, even though experts in the field of nuclear science, the CIA and the State Department advised the White House that the aluminum tubes were not designed for an atomic bomb. Furthermore, the CIA had been unable to develop any links between Iraq and the terrorist group al-Qaeda. But under Feith's direction, the Office of Special Plans came up with information of such links by looking at existing intelligence reports that they felt might have been overlooked or undervalued. The Special Plans office provided the information to the Pentagon and to the White House. During a Pentagon briefing last year, Rumsfeld said he had "bulletproof" evidence that Iraq was harboring al-Qaeda terrorists. At a Pentagon news conference last year, Rumsfeld said of the intelligence gathered by Special Plans: "Gee, why don't you go over and brief George Tenet? So they did. They went over and briefed the CIA. So there's no there's no mystery about all this." CIA analysts listened to the Pentagon team, nodded politely, and said, "Thank you very much," said one government official, according to a July 20, report in the New York Times. That official said the briefing did not change the agency's reporting or analysis in any substantial way. Several current and former intelligence officials told the Times that they felt pressure to tailor reports to conform to the administration's views, "particularly the theories Feith's group developed." Moreover, the agents said the Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat. The agents would not identify the names of the individuals at the Office of Special Plans who were responsible for providing the White House with the wrong intelligence. But, the agents said, the intelligence gathered by the committee sometimes went directly to the White House, Cheney's office and to Rice without first being vetted by the CIA. In cases where the CIA's intelligence wasn't rewritten the Office of Special Plans provided the White House with questionable intelligence it gathered from Iraqi exiles from the Iraqi National Congress, a group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a person whom the CIA has publicly said is unreliable, the CIA agents said. More than a dozen CIA agents responsible for writing intelligence reports for the agency told the former CIA agents investigating the accuracy of the intelligence reports said they were pressured by the Pentagon and the Office of Special Plans to hype an exaggerate intelligence to show Iraq as being an imminent threat to the security of the U.S. The White House has been dogged by questions for nearly a month on whether the intelligence information it had relied upon was accurate and whether top White House officials knowingly used unreliable information to build a case for war. The furor started when President Bush said in his January State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from Africa. Bush credited British intelligence for the claims, but the intelligence was based on forged documents. The Office of Special Plans is responsible for advising the White House to allow Bush to use the uranium claims in his speech, according to Democratic Senators and a CIA agent who are privy to classified information surrounding the issue. CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility last week for allowing Bush to cite the information, despite the fact that he had warned the Rice's office that the claims were likely wrong. Earlier this week, Stephen Hadley, an aide to Rice, said he received two memos from the CIA last year and before Bush's State of the Union address alerting him to the fact that the uranium information should not be included in the State of the Union address. Hadley, who also took responsibility for failing to remove the uranium reference from Bush's speech, said he forgot to advise the President about the CIA's warnings. Hawks in the White House and the Pentagon seized upon the uranium claims before and after Bush's State of the Union address, telling reporters, lawmakers and leaders of other nations that the only thing that can be done to disarm Saddam Hussein is a preemptive strike against his country. The only White House official who didn't cite the uranium claim is Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to Greg Thielmann, who resigned last year from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research- whose duties included tracking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs - he personally told Powell that the allegations were "implausible" and the intelligence it was based upon was a "stupid piece of garbage." Patrick Lang, the former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence, said the Office of Special Plans "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat. Lang said in interviews with several media outlets that the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy. Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorist operations, said he has spoken to a number of working intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi." In an October 11, 2002 report in the Los Angeles Times, several CIA agents "who brief Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on Iraq routinely return to the agency with a long list of complaints and demands for new analysis or shifts in emphasis." "There is a lot of unhappiness with the analysis," usually because it is seen as not hard-line enough, one intelligence official said, according to the paper. Another government official said CIA agents "are constantly sent back by the senior people at Defense and other places to get more, get more, get more to make their case," the paper reported Now, as U.S. military casualties have surpassed that of the first Gulf War, Democrats in Congress and the Senate are starting to question whether other information about the Iraqi threat cited by Bush and his staff was reliable or part of a coordinated effort by the White House to politicize the intelligence to win support for a war. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating the issue but so far neither the Senate intelligence committee nor any Congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Office of Special Plans. But that may soon change. Based on several news reports into the activities of the Office of Special Plans, a number of lawmakers have called for an investigation into the group. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, D-California, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter July 9 to Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-California, chairman of the Armed Services committee, calling for an investigation into the Office of Special Plans. The Office of Special Plans should be examined to determine whether it "complemented, competed with, or detracted from the role of other United States intelligence agencies respecting the collection and use of intelligence relating to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and war planning. I also think it is important to understand how having two intelligence agencies within the Pentagon impacted the Department of Defense's ability to focus the necessary resources and manpower on pre-war planning and post-war operations," Tauscher's letter said. Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, also called for a widespread investigation of the Office of Special Plans to find out whether there is any truth to the claims that it willfully manipulated intelligence on the Iraqi threat. During a Congressional briefing July 8, Obey described what he knew about Special Plans and why an investigation into the group is crucial. "A group of civilian employees in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all of whom are political employees have long been dissatisfied with the information produced by the established intelligence agencies both inside and outside the Department. That was particularly true, apparently, with respect to the situation in Iraq," Obey said. "As a result, it is reported that they established a special operation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which was named the Office of Special Plans. That office was charged with collecting, vetting, and disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that the information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the President without having been vetted with anyone other than (the Secretary of Defense). "It is further alleged that the purpose of this operation was not only to produce intelligence more in keeping with the pre-held views of those individuals, but to intimidate analysts in the established intelligence organizations to produce information that was more supportive of policy decisions which they had already decided to propose." Jason Leopold can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003 Arthur Mitzman Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable Than the Dot.com Bubble? Julian Bond We Shall be Heard Cynthia McKinney Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad Mel Goodman What is to be Done with the CIA? Jason Leopold Tenet Blames Wolfowitz Mickey Z. History Forgave Churchill Doug Giebel Impeachment as the Message Jon Brown Whipping the Post Mano Singham Cheney's Oil Maps Steven Sherman Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC Robin Philpot Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters Khaldoun Khelil Capturing Friedman Jeffrey St. Clair You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed Lenni Brenner Sitting in with Mingus Vanessa Jones Three Dog Night Adam Engel Video Judas Video Poets' Basement Foley, Smith and Curtis Website of the Weekend Illegal Art   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /