The truth is oozing out like a slime trail

Dem: White House insisted on uranium issue in SoU speech
Democrat says White House pushed to include uranium issue in State of Union
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
The Associated Press - 7/17/03 6:03 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Senate Democrat says CIA Director George Tenet told lawmakers that a White House official had insisted on including an unverified intelligence report on Iraq's nuclear program in the State of the Union speech.

But a U.S. government official present at the closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee meeting on Wednesday said it was another CIA official -- not Tenet -- who had discussed the preparations for the State of the Union, and that Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois misrepresented what was said.

Instead of Durbin's account that the White House had "insisted" on including the problematic intelligence, the official said that the CIA had described "give and take."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan described Durbin's account as "nonsense."

"It's not surprising, coming from someone who was in a rather small minority in Congress who did not support the action we took," McClellan told reporters Thursday.

Durbin, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," said that Tenet "certainly told us who the person was who was insistent on putting this language in which the CIA knew to be incredible, this language about the uranium shipment from Africa."

"And there was this negotiation between the White House and the CIA about just how far you could go and be close to the truth and unfortunately those 16 words were included in the most important speech the president delivers in any given year," Durbin added.

Later, on the Senate floor, Durbin said Bush has on "his staff some person who was willing to spin and hype and exaggerate and cut corners on the most important speech that the president delivers in any given year."

At issue was Bush's reference in the speech to a British intelligence report that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Africa. That report had been largely discredited by U.S. intelligence agencies and turned out to be based on forged documents.

In a statement last week and before the committee, Tenet accepted responsibility for not keeping the reference out of Bush's speech.

The U.S. official said that at Wednesday's hearing, senators questioned the CIA official who had been involved in discussions with the National Security Council about the speech.

The CIA official told the senators that the White House hadn't insisted on including information about the uranium in the speech, but there was "a give-and-take" about the draft language, the U.S. official said.

"In the end, he agreed with the NSC official's formulation that it would be technically accurate to say the British had said what they had said," the U.S. official said.

The U.S. official declined to name the officials involved in the conversation. Other officials identified them as Alan Foley of the CIA and Robert G. Joseph of the National Security Council.

A spokesman for Durbin, Joe Shoemaker, said the senator stands by his statement "100 percent" that Tenet had identified the White House official "who participated in and put pressure on the CIA to include this material in the State of the Union address."

Democrats have cited questions about the uranium intelligence as showing the need for a broad investigation into prewar intelligence, beyond the inquiries under way by the House and Senate intelligence Committees.

A proposal by Durbin on Thursday to withhold $50 million in intelligence funding until Bush submits a report about how the White House handled the intelligence was defeated 62-34. Durbin's proposal was offered as an amendment

And the plot sickens...

Senator Blames White House for CIA Gaffe
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-071703intel_lat,1,308433.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Senator Blames White House for CIA Gaffe
Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois says it was a member of President Bush's staff who insisted that erroneous information about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa be part of Bush's State of the Union speech.

By James Gerstenzang and Greg Miller - Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
3:54 PM PDT, July 17, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The debate over President Bush's use of a bogus intelligence report to justify the war against Iraq grew yet murkier today when a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said a White House staff member had been "hellbent on misleading the American people."

Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois said that in testimony before a closed meeting of the panel Wednesday, George Tenet, the director of the CIA, had provided the identity of a White House official who insisted that the information from the intelligence report be included in the president's State of the Union address in January.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan responded: "That characterization is nonsense."

"Sen. Durbin is putting words in someone else's mouth," McClellan said.

He sought to portray Durbin's report on Tenet's testimony in a political light, saying: "Maybe he's going back, trying to justify his own vote against taking action, against addressing the threats that we face."

Seeking to shift the argument to the result of the war in Iraq ?- and away from Bush, the question about the credibility of the president's remarks and whether Iraq did maintain illegal weapons, the press secretary said: "The people of Iraq are liberated from a brutal, oppressive regime. Look at Saddam Hussein. He is gone from power.... He cannot use his weapons of mass destruction."

Durbin's account of the intelligence panel hearing, which he presented on National Public Radio and on ABC's "Good Morning America," and then expanded upon in remarks today on the Senate floor, were the first to directly point at a White House official and declare that, in effect, the CIA was instructed to approve the use of intelligence it knew to be of questionable accuracy.

If his report is correct, it would represent a dramatic escalation in opponents' assertions that the White House intentionally misled the American public as it sought to bolster its argument for the use of force against Iraq.

At the center of the dispute is how the president came to use the questionable information in his presentation of what the White House said was evidence of an Iraqi attempt to build a nuclear arsenal. The White House last week acknowledged that the president's statement relied on a document that turned out to have been forged.

During a brief question-and-answer session at the White House, with visiting Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side, Bush was asked whether he took personal responsibility for the words in his State of the Union address. The president replied: "I take responsibility for putting our troops into action. And I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security and a threat to the security of other nations."

In his answer, he made no reference to the speech or the intelligence report.

Blair then interjected that the intelligence report was based on British information. "We stand by that intelligence," he said.

In the State of the Union address, Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Durbin, reporting this morning to the Senate on the five-hour hearing, said, "The 16 famous words relative to this transaction have now become central in our discussion about the gathering and use of intelligence."

He said the debate has focused on why Tenet did not reign in those trying to put the information in the speech.

"A more important question is before us, and that question is this: Who are the people in the White House who are so determined to include this misleading information in the State of the Union address? And why are they still there?

"That goes to the heart of the question, not just on the gathering of intelligence, but the use of the intelligence by the executive office of the president," Durbin said.

A U.S. official who attended the hearing said that the White House official identified by the CIA is Robert Joseph, who handles counterproliferation issues for the National Security Council. But the U.S. official disputed Durbin's characterization of events, saying it was not Tenet who named Joseph, but Alan Foley, head of the CIA's counterproliferation center, who also testified at the hearing.

Foley and Joseph were the point persons in the talks between the White House and the agency on the disputed uranium language. The U.S. official said that neither Tenet nor Foley told lawmakers that they had felt pressure or any "insistence" from the White House that such language be included.

"That's not a word that came out of any witnesses' mouth," the official said. Asked whether the nature of the testimony might have led some lawmakers to conclude that there had been pressure on the agency, the official said, "It's subject to interpretation."

As the debate dominated the public face of the White House throughout the day, McClellan more than once found himself defending the administration's use of the intelligence report, seeking to aggressively counter Durbin's statements, and shifting the blame to the CIA.

"It's nonsense to suggest that someone was pressuring to put this in there," he said.

"Bottom line," he said at another point, is "if the CIA had said 'take it out,' we would have taken it out."

Meanwhile, the debate took on an openly political edge.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement that Bush should support an independent investigation "so that the American people know the full truth about what happened."

And, with a degree of glee as it sought to link Bush directly with the questioned intelligence report, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee distributed a White House web site photograph of the president at work on the speech, in which the caption reads: "Working at his desk in the Oval Office, President Bush reviews the State of the Union address line by line and word by word."

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.

AND...Bush will still be in office for a 2nd term!

...and, you think that's a good thing, NH?

It's obvious that the field of politics is full of Slime Molds~~~~~~

You have a gift for obtuse expression, NH.

Have you never heard of Dictytostelium discoideum?

Did I say that?

you don't say much - I think you enjoy being cryptic... otherwise, why don't you just answer the goddam question?

This is probably the discussion area where we should take up the question of secrecy and the latest mystery (mentioned this morning in US,UN, IRAQ) about David Kelley, the Brit who passed along the info about faulty WMD info to the BBC, and who has turned up dead. I'd like to post here, for the record, info on a previous (unsolved) mystery which I was reminded of when I read the Kelley news:


Published on Saturday, May 4, 2002 in the Toronto Globe & Mail
SCIENTISTS' DEATHS ARE UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
by Alanna Mitchell, Simon Cooper and Carolyn Abraham
Compiled by Alanna Mitchell

It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up.
Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism.

Statistically, what are the chances?

Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0504-06.htm

Here's the Kelley info:

British police found a body on Friday matching that of a mild-mannered scientist who disappeared after becoming unwittingly embroiled in a furious political dispute about the Iraq war...

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters07-18-072017.asp?reg=MIDEAST

Yeah. People like you were saying that about his daddy.

MY GUESS: He will be defeated in a landslide.

More realistically, it will be Cheney and Rumsfeld that get defeated.
Bush is just the mouthpiece.
It is by no means certain that George will survive the next 16 months in Washington...

Text of missing Kelly's testimony to Brit's HoC panel
Text of Missing Adviser's Testimony to Britain's House of Commons Panel
The Associated Press - Published: Jul 18, 2003

LONDON (AP) - David Kelly, the British Ministry of Defense adviser who was reported missing Thursday, testified on July 15 to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

He was asked whether he was the source for a report by a British Broadcasting Corp. journalist accusing Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's communications director, of interfering in the preparation of intelligence reports on Iraq.

Kelly was specifically asked about his meeting with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan on May 22. Following is an extract from that testimony:

Kelly: My conversation with him was primarily about Iraq, about his experiences in Iraq and the consequences of the war, which was the failure to use weapons of mass destruction during the war and the failure by May 22 to find such weapons. That was the primary conversation that I had with him.

Bill Olner (Labor Party): You certainly never mentioned the "C" word that he went on to explain in his column?

Kelly: The "C" word?

Olner: The Campbell word.

Kelly: The Campbell word did come up, yes.

Olner: From you? You suggested it?

Kelly: No, it came up in the conversation. We had a conversation about Iraq, its weapons and the failure of them to be used.

Olner: How did the word "Campbell" come to be mixed up with all of that? What led you to say that?

Kelly: I did not say that. What I had a conversation about was the probability of a requirement to use such weapons. The question was then asked why, if weapons could be deployed at 45 minutes notice, were they not used, and I offered my reasons why they may not have been used.

It came in in that sense and then the significance of it was discussed and then why it might have been in the dossier. That is how it came up.

Greg Pope (Labor): Mr. Gilligan said in his article in the Mail on Sunday of 1 June "I asked him," the source, "how this transformation happened. The answer was a single word. 'Campbell.'" In your conversation with Mr. Gilligan did you use the word "Campbell" in that context?

Kelly: I cannot recall using the name Campbell in that context, it does not sound like a thing that I would say.

Pope: Do you believe that the document was transformed, the September dossier, by Alastair Campbell?

Kelly: I do not believe that at all.

I hope that, over time, enough will come out to help piece this all together. Having lived through Tonkin, Watergate and Iran-Contra, and therefore being a great believer in government malfeasance, I have to note that Kelley was discovered while Blair was out of the country. (Is it Kelley or Kelly -- I've seen it spelled both ways in reports this morning...?)

Questions, criticism surround information leading to war
Posted on Fri, Jul. 18, 2003 - Knight Ridder Newspapers

Questions, criticism surround information that led to start of war
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay

WASHINGTON - In a speech last August, Vice President Dick Cheney said he was convinced that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." Iraq, he continued, was amassing weapons of mass destruction to use "against our friends, against our allies and against us."

Cheney's address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars kicked off a seven-month campaign by President Bush and his top aides to persuade the United States and the world that Iraq was a gathering threat that could be stopped only by war.

Nearly a year later, that case appears to be coming apart, with some key pieces of evidence in doubt and others disproved outright.

The questions go far beyond the faulty intelligence about Iraq's alleged attempts to purchase uranium, which has dominated recent news coverage.

Saddam may not have been an imminent threat to the world at all, but a regional bully whose weapons programs weren't nearly as advanced as widely believed, according to current and former intelligence officials and other analysts.

The unaccounted-for chemical and biological weapons that Bush, Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others cited have yet to be found, and may never be. Nor has evidence turned up of an advanced nuclear-weapons program or hidden ballistic missiles.

Iraq never was an imminent threat, said Andrew Wilkie, an Australian intelligence analyst who resigned in March to protest his government's support for the war.

There was no intelligence to show that Iraq's chemical and biological programs had advanced to the stage that they were ready to be used as weapons, Wilkie said, remarks that receive some backing from U.S. intelligence reports that recently have come to light.

Critics and even nonpartisan analysts say the White House took what America's spy agencies knew about the Iraqi threat and pushed it to the limits of credibility, and perhaps beyond.

The United States and Britain "did not find the right balance of persuasion and objectivity in their public analyses of the threat before the war and in their arguments in favor of the conflict," military analyst Andrew Cordesman wrote in a report released Wednesday.

Washington and London presented "worst-case estimates to the public and the U.N. without sufficient qualification, and ... their intelligence communities came under serious political pressure to make something approaching a worst-case interpretation of the evidence," wrote Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research center for national-security issues.

The criticism has brought added political peril for Bush because U.S. troops in Iraq are being killed in almost-daily guerrilla attacks.

The president has rejected postwar criticism from what he derisively called "revisionist historians."

As his defenders point out, bipartisan majorities in Congress supported the war. Even European nations that refused to join the fighting argued not with the premise that Saddam was hiding weapons he was banned from having after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but with Bush's proposed solution.

The Clinton administration saw Saddam as enough of a threat that it formally adopted a policy of "regime change" in Iraq.

So did some of Bush's critics. At a White House briefing this week, Press Secretary Scott McClellan read a 1998 letter from Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who urged then-President Clinton to "take necessary actions to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

McClellan said Bush's case for confronting Iraq "was based on solid evidence."

But it also was based on assumptions about Iraq that government officials presumed were certainties after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bush acted not "because we had discovered dramatic new evidence," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress on July 10. "We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11."

Bush's most potent argument for war was that Saddam might share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qaida or other terrorist groups to use against the United States. Right behind that was the contention that Iraq was close to having a nuclear weapon.

Neither has proved true.

Administration claims of ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, disputed by counter-terrorism experts before the war, haven't been borne out.

The intelligence behind such claims was thin at best, said a former U.S. official who had access to classified material about Iraq.

"Normally, you would credit this to being ambiguous and therefore inconclusive. Everything was spun," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Said Wilkie, the Australian analyst: "I never saw a single piece - a single piece - of hard intelligence to persuade me there was any active cooperation at all between Iraq and al-Qaida."

On March 16, four days before the war began, Cheney made the White House's most alarming claim about Saddam's nuclear weapons program: "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

That and similar statements went far beyond an October intelligence assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, that said Iraq "probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade" if left unchecked.

CIA director George Tenet said last week that there were six reasons for concluding that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons. He didn't describe them.

One piece of evidence, not among the six but cited by Bush in his State of the Union address, was that Iraq had attempted to purchase large quantities of uranium ore in Africa.

Documents from the African country of Niger that supported the allegation were known at the time to have been forgeries, and the White House has acknowledged that Bush shouldn't have made the claim.

Bush, Powell and others also cited Iraqi attempts to import high-strength aluminum tubes for use in centrifuges to purify uranium for a nuclear bomb.

But the State and Energy departments, along with the International Atomic Energy Agency, disputed the CIA's conclusion that the tubes were intended for that purpose.

The issue was even more crucial than the uranium imports for determining whether "the clock" had started counting down to the day when Saddam would have the bomb, said a U.S. intelligence official.

"If you don't start the clock, then you can't say things like, `He can have a nuclear bomb in three years,' " said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive material involved.

Evidence found since the war of a nuclear program consists primarily of pieces of a centrifuge buried in an Iraqi scientist's backyard.

In making the case against Iraq, Bush and his aides also cited stocks of chemical and biological weapons that U.N. weapons inspectors knew once existed but were never accounted for. The White House suggested these caches still existed.

None has turned up, and an internal CIA study found that most U.S. intelligence on Iraqi arms dated from before the first U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998.

A Defense Intelligence Agency report last year said there was "no reliable information" on whether Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons.

Absent new production, most of the unaccounted-for material from the `80s and `90s would be "mush" now, Wilkie said, adding that Iraqi chemical weapons were "notoriously impure," thus more subject to deterioration.

A British allegation that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes also has been discredited.

Some analysts argue that the misstatements and exaggerations will make it harder for Bush or other leaders to make their case when the world next confronts the danger of weapons proliferation, say in Iran or North Korea.

But Cordesman said that in today's world, asking for near-certainty may be too much. In the future, he wrote, "it may not be possible to wait to take military action until many key uncertainties are resolved."

I heard a discussion yesterday on NPR about yellowcake (uranium) and the fact that to convert it into something useful weaponwise would have taken materials and a production capability Saddam didn't have. That made even more unlikely that any such buy on his part would have been related to WMD's. Yellowcake has other, non-lethal, uses (but I didn't catch, if they indeed mentioned them, what those uses were... medical? what?)