CIA Leak Documents To Be Released

[sabra]

Source: AHN

Washington, D.C. (AHN)-A federal appeals court will release some of the documents it reviewed when deciding whether to force journalists to testify in the CIA leak investigation for which a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney was sentenced to 2 ? years in prison for obstructing.

The ruling marks a victory for Dow Jones and The Associated Press, which asked for access to sworn statements that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald gave to justify subpoenas the court ultimately ordered for journalists Judith Miller of the New York Times and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper.

The two news organizations argued that Fitzgerald never needed the testimony of reporters because he knew all along who outed former CIA operative Valerie Plame. Miller spent 85 days in jail in 2005 for refusing to testify; Cooper, meanwhile, testified under a court order.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the materials no longer needed to be restricted since former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the original source for the newspaper article naming Plame, has publicly identified himself.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7007788617

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if we would all get automatic

amnesty just by admitting the illegal things we did? More so if we did it in mass?

I still can't decide if this revelation of the CIA dirty tricks in the 70s, is to out Cheney and his problem obeying laws, or if they're trying to make him out to be a present day sympathetic Jack Bauer?

[Spazito]

2. Here is the pdf link to the released documents

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200502/04-3138a.pdf

It seems Rove pops up in this now that what was redacted is no longer. He WAS a main suspect.

[madhoosier]

9. But I'd love to see the stuff about Rove that is STILL REDACTED ON PAGES 35 THROUGH 37

And you've got to figure that the reason those pages are still
redacted has to be darned interesting.

Thanks for the link!!

[Spazito]

11. Yep, I think they would be mighty interesting too!

It's too bad they remain redacted, I wonder if the two newpaper outlets will fight via FOIA to get those pages made public as well, I hope so!!

[BuyingThyme]

3. Armitage is lying.

[rainy]

5. I always thought he was lying and why was it ok for him to out them and

no one else? Didn't he claim that he didn't know if was wrong or something like that?

[BuyingThyme]

6. He and Woodward made a fake little audio tape in order

to provide cover for Cheney and Libby. They tried to paint Armitage as a gossip who commonly, knowingly discusses CIA operatives while being audio taped. Everybody has bought into it. It's as real as a three dollar bill.

[loudsue]

4. Why in the hell has Armitage NOT been arrested and tried for this crime??

He leaked the name and cover agency for an undercover CIA agent. He did it on purpose. He admits it. He should go to jail.

:kick:

[Garbo 2004]

12. Armitage did not leak the cover agency. & The State Dept memo, Armitage's source of info, did not

indicate V. Wilson was covert. No evidence that he knew that she was covert. Libby and Cheney, who were harassing the CIA, were most in a position to know or certainly at least suspect that Plame was covert, considering that they knew she worked in the CPD in the Directorate of Operations. This info was not included in State Dept's INR memo.

Unlike Libby and Rove, Armitage cooperated with the investigation from the beginning. Libby & Rove tried to cover up what they knew and what they did. To this day, Libby denies that he leaked to journos. Libby was leaking to Judy Miller weeks before Armitage ever spoke to Novak. Libby also spoke with Novak, as did Rove, but we have only Novak's testimony claiming that Libby did not discuss Plame with him. The investigators also suspected Rove and Novak collaborated on a story to tell the investigators that would shield Rove but they couldn't prove it.

As for Plame's cover employer of record, Brewster Jennings, Novak didn't write about it until around September or October 2003 IIRC. But as Joe Wilson pointed out, once Valerie's CIA employment was made public, her cover was blown & effectively so was Brewster Jennings. All one had to do once one knew Valerie really worked for the CIA is do a bit of research. I checked her campaign donations online and noted that her employer of record was not a gov't agency but Brewster Jennings.

From what has been made public, it does appear that Libby and Rove were involved in a concerted effort to get Valerie Wilson's identity out in the media. And as they did so, they said Joe Wilson was full of shit. Armitage on the other hand, while not blameless, does not appear to be part of the WH/OVP conspiracy to out Plame and discredit Joe Wilson's assertions. Armitage, along with State Dept's INR, supported Wilson's conclusions that the Niger yellowcake claims were bogus.

[leveymg]

14. BJ was effectively blown on 06/01/2001 when Armitage outed AQ Khan in the London Times

Richard Armitage is a hard-guy, the point of the spear, who runs the wettest, blackest intel shop in Washington - he is not an idle gossip. He knew exactly who Valerie Plame was, that she was covert, and what she did at CIA Counter-Proliferation Division.

Why did Armitage out the AQ Khan network, when he did, and later take a lead role in outing Valerie Plame? I believe the answer is hinted at in this New Yorker article by Sy Hersh from 2004: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/03/08/040308fa_fact?currentPage=4

In a speech on February 5th at Georgetown University, George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, hailed the developments in Libya as an American intelligence coup. Tenet said, “We learned of all this through the powerful combination of technical intelligence, careful and painstaking analytic work, operational daring, and, yes, the classic kind of human intelligence that people have led you to believe we no longer have.” The C.I.A. unquestionably has many highly motivated and highly skilled agents. But interviews with former C.I.A. officials and with two men who worked closely with Libyan intelligence present a different story.

Qaddafi had been seeking a reconciliation with the West for years, with limited success. Then, a former C.I.A. operations officer told me, Musa Kusa, the longtime head of Libyan intelligence, urged Qaddafi to meet with Western intelligence agencies and open up his weapons arsenal to international inspection. The C.I.A. man quoted Kusa as explaining that, as the war with Iraq drew near, he had warned Qaddafi, “You are nuts if you think you can defeat the United States. Get out of it now. Surrender now and hope they accept your surrender.”

One Arab intelligence operative told me that Libyan intelligence, with Qaddafi’s approval, then quickly offered to give American and British intelligence details about a centrifuge deal that was already under way. The parts were due to be shipped aboard a German freighter, the B.B.C. China. In October, the freighter was seized, and the incident was proclaimed a major intelligence success. But, the operative said, it was “the Libyans who blew up the Pakistanis,” and who made the role of Khan’s black market known. The Americans, he said, asked “questions about those orders and Libya said it had them.” It was, in essence, a sting, and was perceived that way by Musharraf. He was enraged by what he called, in a nationally televised speech last month—delivered in Urdu, and not officially translated by the Pakistani government—the betrayal of Pakistan by his “Muslim brothers” in both Libya and Iran. There was little loyalty between seller and buyer.“The Pakistanis took a lot of Libya’s money and gave second-grade plans,” the Arab intelligence operative said. “It was halfhearted.”

The intelligence operative went on, “Qaddafi is very pragmatic and studied the timing. It was the right time. The United States (the Bush Administration) wanted to have a success story, and he banked on that.”

Read between those lines. The A.Q. Khan network (to some degree knowingly, by Khan and others in the Pakistani gov't) was a sting, managed by CIA-Counter Proliferation Division) for which Valerie Plame worked the Iraq and Iran accounts. Since the 1980s, Khan was the primary supplier of nuclear technology to Iraq and Iran. Valerie Plame started working these cases in 1997. It was Val who travelled to Jordan in 2002 to inspect aluminum tubes intercepted on their way to Iraq, and it was Val who pronounced that they weren't proof that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. That, of course, enraged Cheney, which is why he had Libby, Rove and others out Plame to the press.

That outing Plame effectively destroyed the operational life of everyone else in covert positions at CIA-CPD who worked with her was the very point. That was what Cheney and Armitage were really doing - destroying the part of the CIA that had been running a very successful sting operation that was peddling second-rate technology through Khan, effectively slowing down the nuclear bomb programs of a half dozen of the most dangerous countries in the world. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/1/183411/6866; http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x4659

[madhoosier]

18. Here's an article I wrote over on Smirking Chimp

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7745

In Memory of America’s Intelligence Gathering Abilities.

On this Memorial Day we’re encouraged to remember those who have served and sacrificed for their country, this year we can add America’s Intelligence Gathering Community to those thoughts.

Friday, May 25th Special Council Patrick Fitzgerald filed a memorandum in the I. Lewis Libby sentencing process for lying and obstruction of justice during the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame’s covert status in the CIA. The Plame outing also compromised the Brewster Jennings and Associates covert weapons of mass destruction intelligence gathering organization. No specific details have been released on the impact of destroying the covert cover operation but informed sources suggest that a very large and important intelligence gathering organization was destroyed and deaths of covert operatives or their contacts ensued in the aftermath of Robert Novak’s public disclosure.

If this breach were the only affront to the intelligence gathering capacity of the United States from this administration they would be guilty a grievous affront to the nation’s security in destroying the Brewster Jennings covert intelligence gathering apparatus.

However the Valerie Plame-Brewster Jennings and Associates is but one of MANY EGERGIOUS BREACHES OF VITAL INTELLIGENCE GATHERING CAPABILITIES BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THAT ALL FIT TWO SIMILAR PATTERNS.

FIRST, THE BREACHES OF INTELLIGENCE SOURCES;

Breach # 1; In December of 2001 the Bush administration released a video tape of Osama bin Laden talking with a crippled Saudi Sheik about the attacks of 9/11/2001. The stated purpose of the release of the tape was to prove to the Islamic world that bin Laden was indeed responsible for the attacks. The tape had been filmed by a Saudi Arabian agent that was attempting to set up an operation to take out bin Laden. By releasing the tape the Bush administration tipped bin Laden of the Saudi operation causing bin Laden to change security methods preventing bringing bin Laden to justice.

Breach # 2; To justify a bogus amber terror alert* a few weeks before the 2004 elections National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice disclosed information on an arrest in Pakistan that lead to the disclosure in the press of the identity of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani computer expert and communications agent for the highest levels of al Qaeda. After Khan’s arrest the Pakistanis had turned Khan into becoming a double agent, giving them a direct window into the inner workings of al Qaeda. Imagine had this source been allowed to come to fruition bin Laden’s location might well have been determined and the plans of al Qaeda could have been disrupted. *(The alert on financial centers in New Jersey and New York was based on information that was over two years old found on one of Khan’s captured computers.)

Breach #3: According to leaked intercepts of Ahmed Chalabi a drunken senior government official told the NeoCon darling Chalabi that the NSA had broken the Iranian diplomatic code and the code breakers at the NSA were reading the diplomatic dispatches to their embassies around the world. Chalabi, who sat with Laura Bush during the 2003 State of the Union address, promptly told the Iranians who then stopped using the system we’d compromised. I have little doubt that the combination of hardware, software and human input in cracking the Iranian diplomatic code cost the American taxpayers many many MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. What’s Chalabi’s most recent job, aside from being Iraq’s Oil Minister? Promoting President Bush’s Baghdad surge.

There is also no doubt that when news of the Iranian diplomatic code intercepts broke every nation on the planet reviewed their communication and encryption systems.

Like in the Valerie Plame, Brewster Jennings breach, not one person has been disciplined by the Bush administration for the breaches in the Khan case, the Chalabi case, or the bin Laden tape case. All of these breaches of national security advance the cause of Bush’s endless Global War on Terrorism, and all of these breaches have reduced America’s abilities to gather accurate and timely intelligence on America’s adversaries.

Advancing the NeoCon foreign policy agenda of regime change requires faulty intelligence that other nations presents a dire threat to America’s security. The Bush administration's pattern of compromising America’s intelligence gathering capabilities to advance their un-American NeoCon agenda crosses the threshold of treason.

[calimary]

22. Welcome to DU!

The more noise we make...

Keep yelling, screaming, writing, venting, EVERYTHING!!!

Nice job!

[Garbo 2004]

19. The lead role in 2003? Was Wilson's CIA identity in print on June 23 when Libby was meeting

with Miller, trying to get her to go with the Wilson story and attribute it to a "former Hill staffer?" And Libby met again with Miller with Cheney's blessing and encouragement on the morning of July 8 and again tried to steer her to the Wilson story? Libby knew Wilson didn't work at WINPAC and yet that's what he told Miller, knowing Miller would know the significance of WINPAC vs CPD. The day before Libby had told the WH press secretary that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, just as Fleischer was going to be surrounded by press on the Africa trip. Libby tells Rove and they then both tag team the press, alternately leaking and "confirming" and then lie about it to investigators. Both speak with Novak around July 8/9. We have only their word about the content of those conversations.

Armitage is no saint by any means, but the OVP was the lead in outing Plame, not Armitage or State. State's INR disputed the Niger claims as did Wilson. As did Armitage. And ironically which many people don't seem to realize, as did Novak's column, which refers to "misinformation" based on "forged documents." Which wasn't what Libby was selling when he was peddling his info to Miller. Or Rove to Cooper.

By the way, by Fall 2002 there were published corporate media reports, citing experts including some at DOE (in Knight-Ridder's reports IIRC) that the aluminum tubes weren't suitable for nuclear weapon use. These published reports posed no stumbling block to the war or even Powell's 2003 presentation to the UN and neither did Valerie Wilson. Here's one such article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36348-2002Sep18?language=printer

[leveymg]

20. No. I'm not saying that Armitage was the driving force of the policy, but he and some

others at State who had long worked on South Asia-Middle East issues -- e.g., Marc Grossman -- were instrumental in undoing CIA-CPD's counter-proliferation program that had been closely tied-in with AQ Khan.

Khan centrifuges were second-rate crap, particularly the aluminum tube P-1 model. The steel tube P-2 is little better, and these are among the least efficient designs in use in the world today. But, they were expensive to buy and operate, requiring lots of specialized replacement parts that CIA-CPD traced, monitoring customer programs.

The bomb plans and components that Khan peddled were flawed. Witness the fizzler set off last Fall by North Korea, another Khan customer.

The aluminum tube issue was actually the focus of debate within the Iraq Task Force where Plame worked, not Niger yellowcake, a fable that had been dismissed. Incidentally, Ambassador Wilson made two trips to Niger at CIA's behest, the first one was right on the heels of a 1999 visit by AQ Khan. Mrs. Wilson, not her husband, was at the center of the main controversy between OVP and CIA over the allegations that Iraq was trying to rebuild its program. Valerie flew to Jordan to inspect the tubes and interview Iraqi nuclear scientists, and her findings contradicted the Administration, which brought in outside contractors hired by MZM to try to refute her.

It's Valerie who's referenced in that Post article:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36348-2002Sep18?language=printer

Since then, U.S. officials have acknowledged differing opinions within the U.S. intelligence community about possible uses for the tubes -- with some experts contending that a more plausible explanation was that the aluminum was meant to build launch tubes for Iraq's artillery rockets.

"But the majority view, held by senior officials here, is that they were most likely intended for gas centrifuges," one U.S. intelligence official said in an interview.

The new report questions that conclusion on several grounds, most of them technical. It says the seized tubes were made of a kind of aluminum that is ill-suited for welding. Other specifications of the imported metal are at odds with what is known about Iraq's previous attempts to build centrifuges. In fact, the report said, Iraq had largely abandoned aluminum for other materials, such as specialized steel and carbon fiber, in its centrifuges at the time its nuclear program was destroyed by allied bombers in the Gulf War.

According to Albright, government experts on nuclear technology who dissented from the Bush administration's view told him they were expected to remain silent. Several Energy Department officials familiar with the aluminum shipments declined to comment.

[Garbo 2004]

21. What's your source for your assertion that Valerie was who Albright was referring to? DOE did an

analysis on the tube samples and confirmed they were the same as those previously used for artillery rockets and not fit for nuclear application. Albright convinced a scientist who worked for DOE to speak on background to the Post for that article, despite his fears for his job and security clearance.

That sentence you say references Wilson refers to the DOE edict for DOE employees not to talk to the media after a previous NY Times article (Judy Miller's follow up to her original aluminum tubes article) briefly noted that "some" experts at State INR and DOE dissented from the administration's/CIA-WINPAC's views. (Miller of course played the Administration's side, pronouncing that the majority view was that the tubes had a nuclear application, which was in fact a minority view not supported by scientific analysis.) Albright had been trying to get first the Times and then the Post to present the nuclear experts' conclusions that the tubes were not fit for a nuclear application.

So do you have a source you can cite that says that sentence refers to Valerie? Or have you simply assumed that? A CIA Ops manager and NOC of course is expected to remain silent about their work. Nothing remarkable about that. But the gov't nuclear experts Albright was talking to and referring to in the article were in DOE. They had the scientific expertise, analyzed the tubes and then were told not to speak on the subject.

[leveymg]

24. Val had personal access to CPD's covert sources - the Iraqis and Pakistanis who

had built Saddam's program during the 1980s. They told her that there had not been any further substantial work done since the end of the Gulf War, when the regime destroyed most of the equipment and facilities that the US military missed from the air.

The May 2003 Iraq Survey Group report showed that about all that remained of the nuclear enrichment program was a single partial P-1 centrifuge and some engineering drawings buried in a scientist's garden.

That report alluded to interviews that Albright and the IAEA inspectors had before 2002 and WINPAC had after the invasion with Iraqi scientists, among whom there were some who were spreading disinformation. But, only CPD would have had full access to Iraqi scientists still in place, the Pakistanis and third-country connections to the Khan network, who had actually been supplying components, who would have been the source of any reconstituted program, if there actually was one. Only CPD had a real-time picture, including the upstream supply links.

Albright wrote about the problem with "noise" coming from other sources on March 10, 2003: http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/al_tubes.html

So Far, No Evidence of a Nuclear Weapons Program

The administration's case has been further weakened because the UN Security Council inspectors have so far found no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. This result comes after extensive IAEA assessments of information from UN member states and many investigations in Iraq.

In addition, former members of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program who have escaped Iraq disagree among themselves about the existence of a nuclear weapons program. Some posit that Iraq's nuclear weapons program continues; some say the program ended after 1991. None of these Iraqis have any direct knowledge of any current banned nuclear programs. They appear to all carry political baggage and biases about going to war or overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and these biases seem to drive their judgments about nuclear issues, rendering their statements about current Iraqi nuclear activities suspect.

The Bush administration has tried to use recent Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of a secret nuclear weapons program, but this information has been widely discounted. One person who heard a classified briefing on Iraq in late 2002 said that there was laughter in the room when the uranium evidence was presented. One of ElBaradei's most dramatic findings, revealed on March 7, was that the documents which form the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Niger and Iraq are not authentic.

CPD disseminated a filtered version of its findings through CIA, which reinforced the findings of the DOE scientists that the aluminum casings were unsuitable for centrifuges. That prevented the sort of consensus findings that the Administration wanted to justify its invasion plans. The DOE analysts in part based their findings on information that filtered out of the Agency, which was under intense pressure from Cheney and WHIG to stop publishing and otherwise airing its contradictory views.

What is your source for the date Val travelled in 2001?

[Garbo 2004]

23. Oh, and the tubes were confiscated in 2001. V. Wilson went to Jordan in summer 2001. Not in 2002

as you previously stated. DOE scientists analyzed the tubes and concluded in 2001 that the tubes were not suitable for use in nuclear centrifuges. (State's INR reached similar conclusions in 2001.)

CIA-WINPAC used contractors for its own analyses rather than use the DOE's expertise. That was done to get the results they wanted which the DOE would not have given them. And the Defense Dept's NGIC also used outside contractors for its analyses. All this just to refute Valerie Wilson? Or rather to provide analyses that supported the conclusions the Administration wanted and refuted the analyses and positions of DOE and State INR? When the Iraq NIE was slapped together in 2002 it was the CIA and DIA/NGIC analyses that overrode the DOE and INR.

A for the WaPO article, DOE scientists worked with Albright's group on the 2002 report cited in the WaPo article. Albright's reference in the article was to the DOE experts who could not be open about their dissent, not Valerie Wilson.

[leveymg]

25. I never said Valerie was leaking, but her findings in CPD reports

were disseminated within CIA, and a filtered (but still classified) version of the data gathered by CPD did make it to others working on Iraq WMD issues, such as the DOE.

You are correct - NGIC and DIA/NGIC contractors (including MZM), were brought in to provide the results-driven (falsified) data about Iraq's defunct nuclear program to counter CPD's findings. But, Valerie was an essential part of CPD's dissenting views. One can't really separate the two. That's why Cheney destroyed her and the people working around her at CPD in 2003, after the earlier conflict over outing CPD's assets within the Khan network.

[Garbo 2004]

27. Again, the tube shipment was seized in Jordan in summer 2001, samples taken

for analysis. IAEA also retrieved samples at that time. A number of sources for that information are available. A few:

NYT article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100304A.shtml
WaPo: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0810-01.htm
Australian TV: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/transcripts/s976015.htm

If Valerie Wilson went to Jordan to liaison with the Jordanians regarding the shipment and saw the tubes, that would have been in summer 2001 when the shipment was seized and samples were collected. (As reported in the book "Hubris" by Corn and Isikoff.)

As for the WaPo article, then when you stated that "it is Valerie who's referenced in that Post article" you didn't mean that it actually specifically referenced Wilson? Just that since presumably she held a dissenting view, when it mentioned dissenters it included Wilson by inference as well as many others?

[Catherine Vincent]

7. Gosh I wish I knew what's in Fitzgerald's brain about this case! n/t

[whistle]

8. This is beginning to smell like a corporate pig farm

[cascadiance]

10. If you all know of where all of these "family jewel" documents are being made available, ...

I'd like to get ahold of them to study them.

I potentially have two situations since the 60's where I might help put together some of the dots... I was living in Ankara right up until 1973 and knew quite a bit of the military personnel that was there then right before the '74 invasion of Cyprus that this document now takes Kissinger to task for helping push and orchestrate.

Also, I'd like to see if there is more information on MSU's "Vietnam Project" that helped turn "Citizen Stan" Sheinbaum into an activist that helped us out so many times in later years with things like the Pentagon Papers, etc. I believe looking back that our family who lived in Southeast Asia during that time was a lot closer to that project than I'd care to realize. I'd like to think that these documents might help give me some answers, and perhaps I could give serious news folks back more info about it too, if I can help put added puzzle pieces together.

Though perhaps the release of this info is intended to try and "help" this administration rationalize their behavior by saying "other administrations did it all through this century", I'd also like to think that by getting it all out and really spelling out the damage and how it happened, it can help us put in some REAL and effective proper checks and balances in 2009 when we set out to fix things, and make us aware of the scope of the potential conspiracy that we have to take down in our government today, which would hopefully have us put in place appropriately sized resources to take them down.

If you look back at this Ramparts article from the 60's or watch the Citizen Stan documentary, you'll see that this undercover CIA project also helped our country instruct S. Vietnam on ways to torture the Viet Cong at the beginning stages of the Vietnam War in the 60's. I recognize a few of the names on this page as people my Dad used to work with.



http://www.cia-on-campus.org/msu.edu/msu.html

The sad thing is that with my Dad now afflicted with alzheimers, there's really no way I can question him to get complete answers on whether he was involved with this or not. I and my Mom though, don't believe that he knew much of what was going on behind the scenes here!

[leveymg]

13. Written 40 years ago -- yet. NOTHING has changed! Amazing and sad.

(Except, maybe, the cultural references of the Asian cheerleader)

The following article on MSU's involvement in Vietnam is merely a case study of two critical failures in American education and intellectual life today. The first and more obvious is the diversion of the university away from its functions (and duties) of scholarship and teaching. The second has to do with the failure of the academic intellectual to serve as critic, conscience, ombudsman. Especially in foreign policy, which hence forth will bear heavily on our very way of life, is this failure serious.

For this failure has left us in a state of drift. We lack historical perspective. We have been conditioned by our social science training not to ask the normative question; we possess neither the inclination nor the means with which to question and judge our foreign policy. We have only the capacity to be experts and technicians to serve that policy. This is the tragedy of the Michigan State professors: we were all automatic cold warriors.

On every university campus, from Harvard to Michigan State, the story is the same. The social science professor, trained (not educated) to avoid the bigger problems, is off campus expertising for his government or industry client whose assumptions he readily adopts. His students are mechanistically led through the same social science materials by a less competent instructor or graduate assistant, and they will be as little exposed to questions of judgment and the application of wisdom as was the professor in the first place.

No doubt the problem is far more advanced at parvenu institutions like Michigan State than in the Ivy League. The struggle for status, recognition and money is an irresistible lure; the glamorous project is grabbed and sometimes even invented. Within the university only the exceptional faculty member seeks reward and promotions via scholarship and teaching. The easier and even more prestigious route is that of the new-breed professor with his machine-stamped Ph.D. who orbits in the university's stratosphere of institutes, projects and contracts. The student is lowest among his priorities. The work he emphasizes is of dubious value -- by reason of his bias against considerations of value.

Where is the source of serious intellectual criticism that would help us avoid future Vietnams? Serious ideological controversy is dead and with it the perspective for judgment. Our failure in Vietnam was not one of technical expertise, but rather of historical wisdom. We at Michigan State failed to take a critical stance a decade ago. This was our first responsibility, and our incapacity gave rise to the nightmare described in the following pages.

[cascadiance]

15. Citizen Stan is such a wise man... Check out this interview where he discussed Carter's book...

http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20061222_sheinbaum_carter/

The man's Jewish, and he did question a little the use of the term "apartheid" by Jimmy, but he gives a lot of credit to Carter for accurately depicting the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

This is a man we should be listening to for guidance, both in the past and in the future.

I hope that I can take him up on his invitation to meet with him sometime soon! It would be a moment I'd cherish for the rest of my life.

[leveymg]

16. I will read the interview. Yes, Stan seems like someone who you should go out

of your way to meet. If you have an outstanding invitation, take him up on it!

Please, take a look at my longish post upthread, and let me know what you think about my take on Hersh's piece about AQ Khan, and my conclusions about why Armitage played a more important role in the outing of Plame than he's given credit for by many people.

[cascadiance]

17. I think that Pakistan has a lot of secrets that are at the center of things...

It certainly is the culprit that 9/11: Press for Truth wants to know more about, and feels was suspicious within 9/11 context as well.

Another person I'd like to try and use personal contacts to find out more about is Mark Grossman, who is rumored to be the one that outed Valerie Plame too, and who was the former U.S. ambassador to Turkey.

[leveymg]

26. Armitage & Grossman appear to intersect in the Plame outing and intermediating ISI

As our friend Robert Paulsen has pointed out: http://ce399.typepad.com/weblog/2006/04/iran_valerie_pl.html

The relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September 4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that it had "triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" as well as meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his "most important meeting" with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In May 2001, both CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had visited South Asia. It's not known if they met with Mahmood or anyone else in the ISI, but according to credible news reports, Tenet had "unusually long" consultations with President Musharraf. It is also worth noting that Armitage is known for his "large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI" as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair. On the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing. Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun" indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks. (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essays... )