U.S. Shutters Site With Saddam-Era Files

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Documents.html

U.S. Shutters Site With Saddam-Era Files

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 3, 2006
Filed at 8:46 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration's decision to shutter a Web site that contains documents from Saddam Hussein's covert nuclear program has renewed debate over the threat posed by Iraq and the question of which political party can best guard U.S. secrets.

On Friday, Republicans said the documents, which predated the 1991 Gulf war, provided a reminder that Saddam was a major risk. Democrats said release of the information in the first place had been nothing more than a dangerous political ploy.

Established in March, the government Web site -- called the ''Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal'' -- was intended to be a repository for millions of pages of documents seized in Iraq over the past 15 years.

It's not clear how many documents might contain potentially dangerous material. But National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office suspended public access to the site on Thursday, after The New York Times questioned whether some materials provided too much information about making atomic bombs.

MORE

[MikeNearMcChord]

1. Did I hear this right on Countdown,

that this site was up from December until Yesterday? I wonder if the Iranians got tipped off on this site? Will someone rid America of this troublesome administration?

[54anickel]

2. What sort of title is that? Compare that AP version to the Reuters one

that was filed 3 hours before the OP

U.S. Shuts Web Site Said to Reveal Nuclear Guide

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-security-internet-iraq.html

WASHINGTON ( Reuters) - The Bush administration closed a government Web site set up to publicly display pre-war Iraqi documents on weapons of mass destruction after experts said its content included details for building a nuclear bomb, officials said on Friday.

The unclassified site was established by U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte in March under pressure from Republicans, who believed the captured documents would illustrate the dangers of Saddam Hussein during an election year marked by increasing voter disaffection over the Iraq war.

``Something unfortunate occurred,'' White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters aboard Air Force One as President George W. Bush traveled to Iowa to campaign for Republicans.

Negroponte's office shut down the site, known as the ''Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,'' after The New York Times informed the Bush administration about expert concerns over posted accounts of Iraq's nuclear research before the 1991 Gulf War.

The New York Times, which broke the story late on Thursday, reported that the site's contents in recent weeks had begun to ''constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.''

more...

[rodeodance]

4. Heekstra is trying to make the IAEA a potential target!

Pressed by Republican members of Congress, Negroponte's office last March ordered the unprecedented release of millions of pages of Iraqi documents, most of them in Arabic, collected by the U.S. government over more than a decade. Detractors have said the Republicans were holding out hope for evidence of the never-found Iraqi WMD.

Until this week, the information had been posted gradually on public Internet servers. Negroponte's office has said the government had made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, their factual accuracy or the quality of any translations, when available.

In a statement, House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said his staff's preliminary review of the documents in question suggests that some may be from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

''There is a serious question of why and how the Iraqis obtained these documents in the first place,'' said Hoekstra, one of the chief advocates for the documents' release. ''We need to explore that carefully. I certainly hope there will be no evidence that the IAEA had been penetrated by Saddam's regime.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Documents.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[54anickel]

5. Hoekstra's just covering his ass for his stupidity in all of this to begin with.

Looking back, seems he was just a tool of some force much higher up the food chain. Isn't that how the true PTB usually work? Find some sap who's trying to make a name for himself, plant an idea into that person's pea-brain and watch it take off. Hoekstra was so intense on making a name for himself and joining the big fish in the pond that he bulldozed this idiocy right through. Made a name for himself alright.

Since this stuff has been out there not one new shred of valid evidence has come out to justify the attack on Iraq. There were a couple "AH-HAAA this PROVES Saddam was going to attack the US" theories that came out shortly after the website was set up. But, they were quickly proven to be bullshit based on "evidence" taken out of context. I think the idea was to discredit the intelligence agencies that said Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11 or Al-Qadea. They were throwing BS against the wall to see what might stick - nothing did. They may have had a plan for an October surprise toss at the wall from this website, if they did - something went terribly wrong and it's backfiring on them.

Hoekstra was the idiot pushing the idea from the very beginning so of course he's going to try and pin the blame on someone else.

A few articles from Feb - March when they first set up the website.


Furor Erupts Over Recordings of Saddam
http://www.nysun.com/article/27684?page_no=1

snip>

The quiet re-examination parallels efforts from the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican of Michigan, who is in the early stages of his own review. He told the Sun last week that he checked the authenticity of Mr. Loftus's recordings with the intelligence community and confirmed that it was Saddam's voice on them.

Mr. Hoekstra has also been pestering the directorate of national intelligence to translate and make public what he claims are nearly 36,000 boxes of captured documents and materials from Iraq that may shed clues on the WMD front.

The Defense Department now appears to be working on the directorate to make other Iraq files public as well. A February 6 letter from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to Senator Santorum, a Republican of Pennsylvania, said Mr. Rumsfeld is working with the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, to release Iraqi files sought from the Harmony database, which catalogs material on terrorism secured since September 11, 2001.

Mr. Rumsfeld wrote, "You should know that Mr. Negroponte has lead responsibility within the US government for this material. As such we have been working with his office to establish the best path forward."





WMD in Iraq? Take a look for yourself
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1741790,00.html

snip>

Under fire for failing to predict September 11 and for messing up the Iraq job, America's spies have started posting the hundreds of thousands of captured prewar Iraqi documents on the web, and challenging the public to do better.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, raised the stakes by saying: "We're going to find some important and surprising things in these documents."

The nation's bloggers have responded with relish. One of the released documents has already triggered a diplomatic incident by suggesting Russia had handed over US attack plans to Baghdad, although they turned out to be bogus.

snip>

Unsurprisingly, some of the professionals are scoffing at the free-for-all. "It's like putting firearms in the hands of children," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA and state department counterterrorism expert. "The problem is that the documents without context aren't going to tell you a lot.





Finally
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/970xflib.asp

The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the timeframe for releasing the documents, the mechanism for scrubbing documents for sensitive information, and most important, the criteria for withholding documents from the public. But some of the captured files should be available to the public and journalists within weeks if not days.

President George W. Bush has made clear in recent weeks his displeasure with the delays in getting the information out to the American public. On February 16, one day after ABC News broadcast excerpts of recordings featuring Saddam Hussein and his war cabinet, Bush met with congressional Republicans and several senior national security officials and said three times that the documents should be released. "This stuff ought to be out," he told National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. "Put this stuff out." It seems Bush will soon get his wish.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who has been steadfast in his resolve to see these documents released, said today that "this is a bold decision in favor of openness that will go a long way towards improving our understanding of prewar Iraq . . . By placing these documents online and allowing the public the opportunity to review them, we can cut years off the time it will take to gain knowledge from this potential treasure trove of information."

snip>

For months, Negroponte has fought any large-scale release of captured documents, arguing alternately that the documents were only of historical interest and that they contained too much sensitive, "actionable" intelligence to be released publicly. Late last week, after Hoekstra appeared on "Fox & Friends" to renew his call for the release of the documents, Negroponte began to soften his opposition. The two men spoke Wednesday morning, and the DNI told Hoekstra he was open to releasing some of the documents labeled "no intelligence value" as a way to begin the release process. Hoekstra took the offer as a good first step, but in a letter to Negroponte that same day insisted that documents relevant to the war be included in any release. The House Intelligence chairman spoke with White House officials, including Negroponte and Hadley, throughout the day Thursday and Friday, with the hope of securing a deal that would permit the documents to be made public. He left for the weekend without any assurances.

snip>

No one can say with any certainty what will come from the document release. Intelligence officials with knowledge of the exploitation process estimate that less than 4 percent of the overall document collection has been fully exploited. It's reasonable to assume that documents in the collection will provide support to both supporters of the war in Iraq and critics. Summaries of the exploited materials, listed in a U.S. government database known as HARMONY, suggest that the new material will at least complicate the overly simplified conventional wisdom that the former Iraqi regime posed no real threat.

more....


Wikipedia gives a decent description of that HARMONY database http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Iraqi_Freedom_documents
which they pulled from a Salon.com article - http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/04/13/document_dump/index_np.html
snip>

According to history professor Fritz Umbach, the document archive has been seeded "with suggestive jihadist materials" unrelated to the war in Iraq, and cites specific examples. In a Salon.com article, Umbach claims to have identified "approximately 40 files that are either completely unrelated to Iraq, or that are related only through jihadist elements of the insurgency that began after Saddam's fall." He also notes that the archive website was linked "to an entirely unrelated database of al-Qaida materials," the Harmony database, creating confusion over documents suggestive of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Umbach writes, "Whether intentional or not, the conflation and confusion of materials has been more than sufficient to convince bloggers on the political right that there were, as Bush officials insisted, operational links between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaida."

[rodeodance]

3. doesn't the media GET IT-the WH is politicalizing Nat. securitity!