Spy Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tenet10mar10,1,3578305.story?coll=la-home-headlines

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WASHINGTON — A special intelligence unit at the Pentagon privately briefed senior officials at the White House on alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda without the knowledge of CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to new information presented at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

The disclosure suggests that the controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration's views on Iraq's alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet said he was unaware until recently that the Pentagon unit had presented its findings to the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. It is not clear whether Cheney or Rice were present for the briefing, which was mentioned in a Defense Department letter released by the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

...more...

How do we inform the masses??

in your area -

print up flyers and put them on telephone poles -

signs in your car windows -

sidewalk chalk near coffee shops -

be creative and loud.

Hang in there.

No matter what. Bible belt f-ers, but I'll try some of the others. Thanks!!

butt fired.

It was under questioning from Levin that Tenet acknowledged that he did not know until within the past few weeks that a special Pentagon intelligence analysis unit had briefed the White House on ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"I did not know that at the time, and I think I first learned about this at hearing last week," Tenet said. A U.S. intelligence official said Tenet first learned of the White House briefing Feb. 24 during a closed-door hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

This info has been common F'ing knowledge here at DU for quite awhile.

Can anyone here put a date on when we DU'ers knew? Seems like quite awhile to me.

...but I don't think anything was mentioned about OSP briefing the NeoCon Junta privately. IMHO, I think that's the point Tenet is trying to make.

And why fire Tenet? Who do you think is giving permission to leak all of that damaging info on Jumior to the press?

The Crime and the Cover-Up
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 21 July 2003

The scandal axiom in Washington states that it is not the crime that destroys you, but the cover-up. Today in Washington you can hear terms like 'Iraqgate' and 'Weaponsgate' bandied about, but such obtuse labels do not provide an explanation for the profound movements that are taking place.

...

The Niger nuclear forgery scandal is merely an accent in this criminal symphony. It has become all too clear that a small cadre of ultra-conservative hawks within the administration led us to where we are today with absolutely no oversight from the rest of the government. This group managed the run-up to war by creating demonstrably exaggerated interpretations of intelligence reports, and used 'insider data' from people with many good reasons to help lie America into this war.

The Office of Special Plans, or OSP, was created by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld specifically to second-guess and reinterpret intelligence data to justify war in Iraq. The OSP was staffed by rank amateurs, civilians whose ideological pedigree suited Rumsfeld and his cabal of hawks. Though this group was on no government payroll and endured no Congressional oversight, their information and interpretations managed to prevail over the data being provided by the State Department and CIA. This group was able to accomplish this incredible feat due to devoted patronage from high-ranking ultra-conservatives within the administration, including Vice-President Cheney.

The highest levels of the OSP were staffed by heavy-hitters like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, and William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Cheney before joining the Pentagon. These two men, along with their civilian advisors, worked according to a strategy that they hoped would recreate Iraq into an Israeli ally, destroy a potential threat to Persian Gulf oil trade, and wrap U.S. allies around Iran. The State Department and CIA saw this plan as being badly flawed and based upon profoundly questionable intelligence. The OSP responded to these criticisms by cutting State and CIA completely out of the loop. By the time the war came, nearly all the data used to justify the action to the American people was coming from the OSP. The American intelligence community had been totally usurped.

When the OSP wanted to change or exaggerate evidence of Iraqi weapons capabilities, they sent Vice President Cheney to CIA headquarters on unprecedented visits where he demanded "forward-leaning" interpretations of the evidence. When Cheney was unable to go to the CIA, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, went in his place.

more...
http://truthout.org/docs_03/072103A.shtml

peace

...as was Karen Kwiatkowski.

Why is the congressional committee ignoring those that spoke about OSP in Uncovered: The Truth about the Iraq War? Haven't they seen it? :shrug:

if only by our gut that the OSP was briefing the junta privately and doing an end-around Tenet and the CIA.

And why is it that the fucking DIRECTOR of the CIA didn't know about the OSP, something we here at DU have known about for over a YEAR???

From the same article
<snip>
It was under questioning from Levin that Tenet acknowledged that he did not know until within the past few weeks that a special Pentagon intelligence analysis unit had briefed the White House on ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"I did not know that at the time, and I think I first learned about this at hearing last week," Tenet said. A U.S. intelligence official said Tenet first learned of the White House briefing Feb. 24 during a closed-door hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Pentagon unit was created by Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Feith has said the unit comprised a handful of intelligence analysts, and that it was established to examine state sponsorship of terrorism, but is principally known for its efforts to assemble evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda.
</snip>