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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOMG! Levin releases NEW info from CIA cable debunking Atta Prague meeting-Calls For Declassification
Levin releases new information from CIA cable debunking Atta Prague meetingBush administration relied on false report to build case for invasion; Levin repeats call for full declassification
I will begin by renewing a request to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan. It is a request I have also made to his predecessors: I ask Director Brennan to declassify fully a March 13, 2003 CIA cable debunking the contention that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official named Ahmad al-Ani.
Earlier this year, Director Brennan wrote to me, refusing, as did his predecessors, to fully declassify the CIA cable. But in his letter to me he makes public for the first time a few lines from that document. While this is a significant addition to the public record, and I will discuss that in a moment, it is still not the full cable, and I am calling on him to declassify and release the full cable.
Now, in order to understand why I am making that request, we need to return to early 2003.
On March 6, 2003, just two weeks before U.S. troops would cross the Iraqi border, President Bush held a prime-time televised press conference. In that press conference he mentioned the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks eight times, often in the same breath as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded. According to public polls in the week before the Iraq war, half or more of Americans believed Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. One poll taken in September 2003, six months after we invaded Iraq, found that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed it likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans who believed in a link between Iraq and 9/11 overwhelmingly supported the idea of invading Iraq. Of course, connections between Saddam and 9/11 or al Qaeda were fiction.
Americas intelligence community was pressed to participate in the administrations media campaign. Just a week after the Presidents prime-time press conference, on March 13, 2003, CIA field staff sent a cable to CIA headquarters, responding to a request for information about a report that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings, had met in 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech capital of Prague. In stark terms, this CIA cable from the field warned against U.S. government officials citing the report of the alleged Prague meeting.
Yet the notion of such a meeting was a centerpiece of the administrations campaign to create an impression in the public mind that Saddam was in league with the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. On multiple occasions, including national television appearances, Vice President Dick Cheney cited reports of the meeting, at one point calling it pretty well confirmed. Officials from Donald Rumsfelds Pentagon, who set up a sort of rogue intelligence analysis operation, briefed senior officials with a presentation citing the Prague meeting as a known contact between Iraq and al Qaida.
Now, why am I bringing up a CIA cable from more than a decade ago? Isnt this old, well-covered terrain? No, it isnt. This is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. It is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable. It is about warning future leaders of this nation that they must not commit our sons and daughters to battle on the basis of false statements.
Mr. President, there is no more grave decision for a nation to make than the decision to go to war. And there is no more important issue for every member of Congress than the decision to authorize the use of military force. A decision to authorize force is a decision to unleash the might of our armed forces the strongest military on the planet. It commits the men and women of our armed forces to fight, and perhaps to die, on the battlefield. The decision to go to war must be careful, considered, and based on the facts.
Such careful consideration was tragically absent in the march to war in Iraq.
Here is what the Vice President said on December 9, 2001, in an interview on Meet the Press: Its been pretty well confirmed that he (Atta) did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.
Far from pretty well confirmed, there was almost no evidence that such a meeting took place. Just a single unsubstantiated report, from a single source, and a mountain of information indicating there was no such meeting, including the fact that travel and other records indicated that Atta was almost certainly in the United States at the time of the purported meeting in Prague.
It was highly irresponsible for the Vice President to make that claim. Calling a single, unconfirmed report from a single source pretty well confirmed, as he did on Dec. 9, 2001, was a reckless statement to make on such a grave topic as war, in the face of overwhelming doubt that such a meeting occurred.
Yet Vice President Cheneys reckless statements continued, even as evidence mounted that there was no Prague meeting. In September 2002, he said Atta did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.
The Vice President made those statements in the face of a then-classified June 2002 CIA assessment that said the alleged meeting was not verified, called the information about it contradictory, and described assessments of Iraqi cooperation with al Qaida terror plots as speculative. The Vice President made those statements in the face of a July 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which reported that there was no evidence that Atta was in the Czech Republic at the time. He made those statements despite a Defense Intelligence Agency memorandum in August 2002 rejecting the claims by a rogue intelligence analysis shop at the Pentagon that the meeting was an example of a known contact between Iraq and al Qaida.
That brings us to the March 13, 2003 cable. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that I cannot fully lay out the contents of that cable, because much of it remains classified. But as the Senate Intelligence Committees 2006 Phase II report indicates, it appears that the cable was sent in response to a request from headquarters at Langley for comment on the claim that Atta and al-Ani had met in Prague because the White House was considering a reference to a Prague meeting in a speech. At that time, according to then-CIA Director George Tenets memoir, the CIA had been given a draft of a speech by Vice President Cheney containing assertions about connections between Iraq and al Qaida. Tenet writes in his memoir that he had to object to the President that the speech went way beyond what the intelligence shows. We cannot support the speech and it should not be given.
Mr. President, the text of this cable and the information surrounding it was almost entirely redacted by the CIA from the Intelligence Committees 2006 Phase II report. A number of us objected to that redaction at the time the report was made public; indeed, the Majority Leader introduced legislation which I cosponsored that would have declassified the cable, legislation Republicans blocked. At the time of the reports release, I joined several members of the Intelligence Committee, including Ranking Member Rockefeller, Senators Feinstein, Wyden, Bayh, Mikulski and Feingold, in concluding that the administrations decision to keep the contents of the cable classified represents an improper use of classification authority by the intelligence community to shield the White House.
In the years since I have sought declassification of the March 2003 CIA cable on numerous occasions. Twice, in 2011 and 2012, I wrote to then-CIA Director Petraeus asking him to declassify the cable. Then in February 2013, I asked Director Brennan during his confirmation hearing whether he would contact the Czech government to ask if they would object to declassification of the cable, and he responded, Absolutely, Senator, I will.
Despite his commitment, I heard nothing from Director Brennan for some time. Finally, in March of this year, more than a year after his public commitment to me, I received a letter from Director Brennan. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Director Brennans March 13, 2014, letter to me be entered into the record.
The letter contains no indication that he had asked the Czech government for its view, as he committed to do. But Director Brennans letter includes, and therefore finally declassifies, this very clear statement from the cable: There is not one USG (counterterrorism) or FBI expert that has said they have evidence or know that Atta was indeed (n Prague). In fact, the analysis has been quite the opposite.
Again, that cable was sent to CIA headquarters on March 13, 2003 a week before our invasion of Iraq. But the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, continued to suggest the meeting may have taken place. He said the following about the meeting on Meet the Press on September 14, 2003 six months after CIA received that cable: Weve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just dont know. Here is what he told the Denver Post newspaper on January 9, 2004: Weve never been able to collect any more information on that. That was the one that possibly tied the two together to 9/11. Here is what he told CNN on June 17, 2004: We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we been able to knock it down. We just dont know.\
Mr. President, those statements were simply not true. We did know. We did know that there was no evidence that such a meeting had taken place. We did know there was ample evidence it did not take place. We did know that there was, as the CIA cable says, not one government expert who said there was evidence that Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. [font color=red]The Vice President recklessly disregarded the truth, and he did so in a way calculated to maintain support for the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.[/font]
There is a second recent revelation about how the Prague meeting progressed from unsubstantiated report to justification for war. It comes from Jiri Ruzek, who headed the Czech counterintelligence service on and after 9/11. Mr. Ruzek published a memoir earlier this year, which we have had translated from Czech. It recounts the days after the terror attack, including how his nations intelligence services first reported a single-source rumor of a Prague meeting between Atta and al-Ani, how CIA officials under pressure from CIA headquarters in turn pressured him to substantiate the rumor, and how U.S. officials pressured the Czech government when Czech intelligence officials failed to produce the confirmation that the Bush administration sought.
Mr. Ruzek writes, It was becoming more and more clear that we had not met expectations and did not provide the right intelligence output. Mr. Ruzek goes on: The Americans showed me that anything can be violated, including the rules that they themselves taught us. Without any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion and use it as an excuse for military action. We were supposed to play the role of useful idiot thanks to whose initiative a war would be started.
Thats chilling. We have a senior intelligence official of a friendly nation describing the pressure that he and other Czech officials were under to give the Bush administration material it could use to justify a war.
When it came to the most serious decision a government can make the decision to commit our sons and daughters to battle the Bush administration was playing games with intelligence. The full, still classified cable includes critically important, relevant information, and it has been redacted and denied to the public in order to protect those in the Bush White House who are responsible.
The March 13, 2003, cable is an invaluable record in helping the American people understand how their elected officials conducted themselves in going to war. Continuing to cloak this document with a veil of secrecy, revealing a few sentences at a time, allows those who misled the American people to continue escaping the full verdict of history. It deprives the American people of a complete understanding of how we came to invade Iraq. In his letter to me, Director Brennan writes, I understand that your principal concern is that the historical record be as complete as possible regarding this period in our history, and on this point we are in agreement. But Director Brennans apparent refusal to do what he has committed to do to ask the Czech government if it objects to release of the cable now takes on the character of a continuing cover-up.
Mr. President, I believe decision-makers should have to face the full, unadulterated, unredacted truth about their decisions. The American people should know the full story not just so we can understand the decisions in 2002 and 2003 that took us to war, but as a warning to future leaders against the misuse of intelligence and the abuse of power."
- See more at: http://www.levin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/levin-releases-new-information-from-cia-cable-debunking-atta-prague-meeting#sthash.UmXg0Hds.dpuf
djean111
(14,255 posts)librechik
(30,678 posts)Enrique
(27,461 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)underpants
(183,007 posts)Brennan is a liar. Today he openly stated that torture DID lead to actionable intelligence.
kpete you probably knew the gist of this already but to have a Senator do what Levin did here is remarkable.
deminks
(11,022 posts)but also the Czechs.
There is a second recent revelation about how the Prague meeting progressed from unsubstantiated report to justification for war. It comes from Jiri Ruzek, who headed the Czech counterintelligence service on and after 9/11. Mr. Ruzek published a memoir earlier this year, which we have had translated from Czech. It recounts the days after the terror attack, including how his nations intelligence services first reported a single-source rumor of a Prague meeting between Atta and al-Ani, how CIA officials under pressure from CIA headquarters in turn pressured him to substantiate the rumor, and how U.S. officials pressured the Czech government when Czech intelligence officials failed to produce the confirmation that the Bush administration sought.
Mr. Ruzek writes, It was becoming more and more clear that we had not met expectations and did not provide the right intelligence output. Mr. Ruzek goes on: The Americans showed me that anything can be violated, including the rules that they themselves taught us. Without any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion and use it as an excuse for military action. We were supposed to play the role of useful idiot thanks to whose initiative a war would be started.
I did not know this. This is new to me.
2banon
(7,321 posts)CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)neverforget
(9,437 posts)Life in prison for all of those bastards
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)He's a criminal.
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)I always liked Carl Levin, mostly because he was one of the few who voted against the war. Too bad he's leaving.
bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)our Dem leaders.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... Democrats only amass this amount of courage to speak truth to power when they are walking out the door.
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)if justice applied as we pretend it does.
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)Cheney may too sick an old bastard to every be put in an actual prison cell, but there are hospital/prisons maintained by the Federal government. Such a facility sounds like it might be just what is called for in this case.
alfredo
(60,081 posts)another_liberal
(8,821 posts)The American people have already paid out far too much for his upkeep.
alfredo
(60,081 posts)Hekate
(91,003 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)I think if the whole truth ever comes out people will be shocked beyond beliefe...well all the ones who have a soul that is.
K&R, and thanks again Kpete for all the information you present to us.
woodsprite
(11,940 posts)Two right-wing, gun-humping, teabaggers on my FB wall are of that mind set. I'm sure there are many others who feel the way they do. One posted a picture this morning of a guy falling to his death from the towers and said "That's why I think torture is justified." I wanted to post another pic and say "Torture is not justified. We're better than that."--- or something to that effect --- but when I went in search of a pic, I couldn't bring myself to post it.
Trying to reason with them is like beating your head repeatedly against a brick wall.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)And that is exactly what they are saying, it did not go far enough and we should have done it to more people...and use the emotional blackmail to justify it...
And nothing seems to shame them...it is every bit a cult...or perhaps a sickness of some sort.
Martin Eden
(12,885 posts)They didn't make a decision based on "flawed" intel.
They made the decision then cooked the intel to support it.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)freebrew
(1,917 posts)the document outlined the plan in detail. It's shocking how they played everything according to script.
The 2000 election theft was the key. Not only did they(BFEE) steal trillions from us, they stole almost everything the Iraqis owned. Remember the Baghdad museum was nearly demolished. Some of the things there were saved, but I'm sure the 'private' military ended up with gobs of $$$ from it. Their plan isn't done yet, I'm sure. We need to be ready for what comes next.
Martin Eden
(12,885 posts)Calling for regime change in Iraq and signed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and a host of others who were influential in the administration, much of it became the official National Security Strategy of the United States (aka "Bush Doctrine" .
From bogus claims of unmanned aerial vehicles, biochem weapons trailers, and ties to al Qaeda to yellow cake uranium from Africa and aluminum tubes that would result in "mushroom clouds" over American cities, they perpetrated a systematic campaign of propganda to deceive the American people into believing Iraq posed a "grave and gathering threat" to our homes and families.
In the wake of the national tragedy of 9/11 and the overwhelming support he received, this is by far the most egregious betrayal of public trust by a president in our nation's history.
Instead of being impeached and prosecuted these war criminals were given a 2nd term in office.
I was never so disgusted and ashamed to be an American in my life.
Bush, Cheney, et al continue to lead lives of wealth & privilege, and the old rage flares up every time I see or hear these criminals given a microphone to express their opinion and offer advice.
cntrygrl
(356 posts)"I was never so disgusted and ashamed to be an American in my life. " echo's my feelings exactly.
Blood thirsty war mongers and their greed will be the death of our country eventually. What worries me is how they are constantly getting away with it. Here's hoping "we the people" will finally decide that enough is enough and prosecute those involved.
Little by little the propaganda is being known which is (sadly) confirming what many of us believed when these atrocities were happening.
I fear for our future because I doubt if we can right the wrongs our country committed throughout the years.
Martin Eden
(12,885 posts)There is always hope for the future, and it lies in the young people learning from the past.
But much damage has been done. Some of it can never be mended, and the consequences will persist.
mahannah
(893 posts)winterwar
(210 posts)One of the only true old-school liberals left. He will be dearly missed in my state.
I think the mainstream media should be included as an accomplice for their complicit role in all this.
2banon
(7,321 posts)Thespian2
(2,741 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)The M$M is to blame for most of it imo...they had the chance to stop every single one of the fuck ups STARTING with the bullshit election in 2000.
The level of social engineering going on here is what the CIA refers to as 'clandestine operations'.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... with propaganda and out right lies. The first time I felt that the American public was being manipulated was back in the run-up to the signing of the NAFTA treaty by Clinton. GHWB had called it the enactment of the "New World Order," but he forgot to tell us what that meant. This isn't a democracy anymore. It's a Corporate shell game. We pay for our demise every year on or before April 15th.
The mass manipulation continues.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... Republicans accusing Democrats of "social engineering?" In my mind, at least, mass manipulation is social engineering. In their minds, not so much. To them, "social engineering" = the safety net, I guess.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)But what they are doing is always worse. Far worse.
Remember when their constant refrain was "legislating from the bench"? Next thing you know corporations are people and money is free speech.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... I almost said the same to you, the sociopaths that they are. One time, my brother-in-law accused my sister of infidelity. She told me about it and we both almost fell in the floor laughing. My sister was a beauty, alright, but nothing could have been further from the truth about her fiddling around with someone other than her husband. He used to call her a 'Nun" because she didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't do drugs of any kind. In fun, I called her "Goody-goody-two-shoes." Come to find out, he was doing what he accused her of doing. This all unfolded when we (Sis and I) were both in our early 20s. It was a great life lesson, and we've both seen it happen over and over and over through the years.
Young people listen up: If someone accuses you of something that you would never think of doing, KNOW what you're dealing with. A sociopath. Accusing you of what they, in fact, are doing.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Now Phil is 78 years old. As far as I know he has never been allowed to sit down on a TV set and tell his story. But the liars are on 24/7.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)The best (and easiest) thing people can do to begin restoring the country to sanity is to unplug from all the corporate networks. And yes, that definitely includes NPR and MSNBC.
Democracy Now: Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing from MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldnt Tolerate Antiwar Voices
The Real News Network: The Radicalization of Phil Donahue
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)I guess what I meant was Phil didn't get to appear on the mass media TV. I'm a supporter of Democracy Now.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)Our mistake is in expecting someone who challenges the official narrative to appear on mass media TV as it's currently set up, which is as a tool to deliver profits and eyeballs to corporate media and their clients. Until our system is changed, it ain't gonna happen. If it does, it'll happen so quickly that most people won't even notice. Either that, or it will be washed away with so much "balance" that any impact it might've had will be utterly diluted. The public airwaves no longer provide a public service. They haven't for years. If you're a Democracy Now supporter, you obviously understand this. But many others assume/hope the situation will change without having to change the system.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)If you want to silence a chronic liar, stop listening to him/her.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)Marginalization, ridicule, and worse. Much worse.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)It was authorized to get the (false) confessions needed to justify the invasion of Iraq....just the first stop on the plan to remake the entire Middle East.
MSM has blood on their hands, involved agents at CIA are scumbuckets and the agency imo should be disbanded altogether, but the real war criminals here are the men who ordered the gloves to come off for their own nefarious purposes.
*if it was, Zubaydah would not have sat around for 47 days before being tortured.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)Release the 28 pages and let's see who really instigated 9/11.
I'm betting it wasn't Saddam Hussein...
madokie
(51,076 posts)course many of us here at DU are aware of all of this but many, hell most people aren't or weren't until now. If they're paying attention now that is
think
(11,641 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)robinlynne
(15,481 posts)This is fantastic! I am minus one high-school friend and one cousin
who were killed in Iraq, so I'm taking the BFEE Lies a tad personally.
May the courts have no mercy on their black hearts.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)I'm lying.
Sorry, but their lives didn't serve a greater purpose.
It is like that with Vietnam, the unnecessary war of my era. Some wealthy connected guys and CIA cowboy types made a fortune on that war. The rest of us lost dear ones for no good reason.
Some Vietnam veterans cling to the noble cause idea even today. But there was no noble cause. It was just the CIA fucking around as they will.
This is their greatest crime, sending citizens to die for no good reason.
They are war criminals.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)IthinkThereforeIAM
(3,078 posts)... when presented with the, "evidence", that Atta had went to Prague from the U.S. of A. and back to playboy lifestyle, yada yada...
Why so long to put into print what so many of us put together a decade ago.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Oh, wait. There won't be any more history books.
Even if there are history books they certainly won't contain the truth. History books come from Texas where Dick Cheney is revered. We will get the Dick and Bush version of 911 and Iraq.
randome
(34,845 posts)This is what we need more of.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)this alleged meeting was a damned lie.
ANOTHER one.
How long, how many years, will it take to connect ALL the dots? To realize that the books written in contradiction to The Official Story have more accuracy than TOS?
N_E_1 for Tennis
(9,799 posts)Mr. Levin will be sorely missed. Always was proud to vote for him.
earthside
(6,960 posts)However, he has strangely become a defender of Bush-Cheney immunity from the truth.
randome
(34,845 posts)Obama is not out to 'decimate our way of life' or anything like that. Judging the man by his demeanor and apparent intentions, it's clear to me he would prefer to focus his attention on the economy and the safety net.
Just because he sees a larger picture (not setting the precedent for getting 'revenge' on prior administrations, for example) does not mean he isn't on our side.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers, it's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)next morning to the horrible news that bush had "won". When are we going to hold those who engineered the theft of the election outcome, mainly the SC 5 rove and bushco? Without that all this horror would never have happened! Impeach the SC 5!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Somebody tried to tell us about that once. Don't have a link or nothing, but it was on DU.
NoMoreRepugs
(9,505 posts)how Republicant heads would be exploding across the country as they raced to charge a Democratic administration and its leaders with war crimes...
this country is lost, it's why I've encouraged my kids to work overseas and stay there and build their lives
PatSeg
(47,737 posts)is a true statesman. Excellent way to end his career.
olegramps
(8,200 posts)Please refer to Wiki's article "Atta's alleged Prague connection." The NY Times article by John Tagliabue Oct. 20, 2001 said it was B.S. Then on Oct. 27, 2001 the Times retracted but then again latter denied there was any evidence such a meeting took place.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)and if this country does not prosecute him, hopefully the International Community will.
Maybe that's where it has to happen, because Cheney had co-conspirators like Blair helping him to spread his deadly lies.
Good for Levin, Udall, and I hope the hits keep coming until finally this war criminal has nowhere to go.
I remember everything that was happening as recorded in this statement from Levin.
I remember how desperate we were for the truth to come out before it was too late. Because we knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Ledeen, Blair and a whole host of these neocons are responsible for the tragic deaths of thousands of US soldiers and over a Million Iraqis and the slaughter in that part of the world is ongoing.
I hope I'm not being too naive, but does it seem like something is finally beginning to happen to get these criminals our of our government, behind the scenes or out front, permanently and send a message to future criminals that this country will not tolerate these kinds of traitors.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Maybe we shouldn't put the Bushies on trial. We should turn them over to The Hague and let them do it.
Bobcat
(246 posts)Oh good! I can't wait to hear Chuckie Todd grill Cheney about this.
MinM
(2,650 posts)It seems to me that part of the apathy towards the Democratic Party can be traced to the failure on the part of Democrats for the brief time we were in charge during and immediately following the Bush-Cheney years to hold them accountable. Specifically the House and more specifically chairmen from our party i.e., Waxman, Conyers...
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)The Senate report is aimed at them, but this leak is aimed at the people (Cheney, Dimson, et al) who ordered the program. Dick Cheney meanwhile is busy making it clear to CIA that he has their backs.
The CIA has been revealed to be clueless, incompetent, bungling and fucking evil...but they do know where the bodies are buried.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)It will prove that a week before going to war, the CIA gave them incontrovertible truth that the lone report asserting a very tenuous link between Saddam and Al Qaeda was false.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)the info that was just leaked was from the CIA. They are rattling their sabers, and Cheney in his inimitable style is letting them know he has their backs.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)contents, but since it is classified is not allowed to release it without authorization from either the agency that created it or the President or a group/person he designates.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)I'm sure the above-the-law CIA could keep quiet...if they wanted to. They don't.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)There is zero chance that the Obama DOJ throws him in prison for a release of a cable like this. The CIA's choice is to release what Levin wants them to release on their own terms or on his.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)... if you actually believe that Obama would prosecute Levin, Chris Christie has a bridge he would like to sell you.