PLAME/AIPACGATE UPDATE: OSP tried to plant WMD in Iraq.

[robertpaulsen]

That's the bombshell I got out of Raw Story's latest:

Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to and after combat operations began. Under the supervision of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy. According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently under investigation by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

snip

During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members who were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.

“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”

The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Secretive_military_unit_sought_to_solve_0105.html


I think it's important to give credit to Peace Patriot for articulating this theory a long time ago on DU, your instincts were correct. I'll try to link a thread when I can find it.

[Wind Dancer]

1. Why does this not surprise me?

Great find, robertpaulsen!

I wonder how much of this info has been uncovered by Fitzgerald during his investigations?

[Chipper Chat]

99. Remember when Cheney said "We KNOW where they are."

Translation: "We know where they will be planted."
It all makes sense now.

[FearofFutility]

104. Per Rumsfeld

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." –Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when asked about weapons of mass destruction in an ABC News interview, March 30, 2003 .

[Al-CIAda]

2. US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower

FWIW-

Tuesday, August 12, 2003
US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower

Daily Times Monitor

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the Environmentalists Against War report.

Nelda Rogers is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the DoD. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, “Ms Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense.”

The information that is being leaked out is information “obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the DoD and/or the CIA. “According to Ms Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq,” reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides “Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence”.

Al Martin is a retired Lt Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called “The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider,” and is considered one of America’s foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by former military personnel and “the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace”.

Cont-
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-8-2003_pg1_9

[wtbymark]

4. I want to see public hangings. n/t

[Just Me]

12. This is insane. These whistle-blowers are being completely ignored.

I mean, seriously, is this country THAT FAR GONE?!?!?! :scared: shit

[EVDebs]

18. All part of their plan

The Emperor has no clothes but carries a big stick. Get yer mind outta the gutter !

Sun Tzu, the Art of War, and incompetence and ineffectiveness

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=55585&mesg_id=60263

sometimes they just aren't faking it !

[EVDebs]

15. This would have to include Task Force 121 and then begs question

of TF121 having any domestic spying operations going on inside US. Then questions about reporters, and Operation Mockingbird will pop up. Who's tied to intell and working as a 'journalist' and who's playing it straight ?

Stay tuned.

[lala_rawraw]

108. TF21 is TF20 Renamed:

They are one and the same team. LA

[gilpo]

27. I did a double take at the date

Does the MSM just think this stuff is made up to make the * people look bad?

I need to vomit now...

[EVDebs]

32. Don't worry be happy. Read post #18 and breathe calmly now...

[newyawker99]

58. Hi gilpo!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[lostnfound]

114. Thank you for your knowledge and memory!

This kind of quick context and backup for current stories is what makes DU so great.

:yourock:

[arcane1]

3. Makes sense. They planted the "insurgents" too:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/19/content_3514065.htm

BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police detained two British soldiers in civilian clothes in the southern city Basra for firing on a police station on Monday, police said.

"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.

He added that the two were being interrogated in the police headquarters of Basra.

The British forces informed the Iraqi authorities that the two soldiers were performing an official duty, the source said. British military authorities said they could not confirm the incident but investigations were underway.

[NNN0LHI]

14. That one bothers you too doesn't it? It just eats at me n/t

[Poll_Blind]

54. You aren't the only one.... n/t

PB

[leftchick]

105. me too

It explains so very much of the current chaos in Iraq yet no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole.

[EVDebs]

16. Ahem. Chalabi as an Iranian spy is something we don't want to discuss

Pat Lang of DIA has already said it was 'good work...and I admire good work'. Too bad for Bush it also amounts to treason.

[Old and In the Way]

74. Astroturf insurgency. Create a problem where none exists.

Justify your continuing occupation of their country. Keep the oil turned off...for now.

[tatertop]

113. that's already been forgotten

how sad

[arcane1]

119. that's because the 2 Brits weren't trying to marry one another

or use those explosives to blow up a Christmas tree :evilfrown:

[rpgamerd00d]

5. Obviously, this means they knew there were no WMDs beforehand

And thus, nails Conyers Censure/Impeachment articles to their foreheads.

[EVDebs]

23. The better to build the 14 Enduring Bases...

If the U.S. is ultimately leaving Iraq, why is the military building 'permanent' bases?
http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm

That's easy, they aren't leaving and they keep telling everyone they are. With the Military Industrial Complex, 'I love it when a plan comes together', they just don't 'improvise, adapt, overcome'--sorry Clint--they just keep on wading deeper into the Big Muddy !

[Just Me]

28. Permanent U.S. military presence. No way in hell that will be tolerated.

How much blood and treasure are these assholes willing to spend? Apparently, as much as the American people will allow,...and then some.

I just hate that this is happening. DAMN!!!

[EVDebs]

34. R's in Congress are hoping you won't notice until AFTER the '06 elections

Sorry bout dat.

[glitch]

55. It's not their blood, it's not their treasure. So there are no limits. nt

[Just Me]

68. Which is precisely why my concern, as all patriots' concerns should,...

,...grow!!! There is an imminence to this situation. I can handle those who chide me. I can't handle those who are FAILING TO DO THEIR FUCKING JOB AND PROTECT THIS NATION, ITS PEOPLE, ITS CONSTITUTION FROM THOSE WHO ARE OVERTLY VIOLATING IT ALL!!!!

DAMN!!! DAMNIT!!! damn x(

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

30. I thought we would find planted WMD's

I was surprised we didn't find something.

I expected evidence planted by the CIA/DIA/NSA.

[Stephanie]

6. k&r

And Raw Story has not been wrong yet, AFAIK. Waiting for the corporate press to report this.

[Me.]

7. So.....

What was Wurmser's role in all of this and, did V Plame find out what they were up to, say dragging weapons in from Syria, and put the kibosh on it?

[robertpaulsen]

10. I was asking similar questions in 2004 on Plame Thread 6

robertpaulsen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Mon Jul-12-04 07:28 PM
Response to Reply #107
140. Bush's rationale for war was a series of McGuffins!


Thanks for resurrecting the Hitchcock lexicon, although in dimson's case it would have to be a post-McGuffin, since he was using the same McGuffins his FATHER used which were recycled old news the first time around! He used weapons of mass destruction against his own people! Never mind that we tried to shift blame to Iran, or that we kept funding him even after the truth came out.

Outing Plame to silence Wilson was definitely a bungled twofer, but again I have to go back to Joe Klein's article in Time and wonder, what was the significance of the "sting operation" that Plame was involved in regarding WMD trafficking?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,11010...

Then I remembered an article I saw on commondreams.org:

US Unloading WMDs in Iraq


TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) -- Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq's interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.

A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions.

He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention was still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala and the signing of Iraq's interim constitution.

The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in the 1980s and 1990s.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0313-08.htm

I think that even if the Bush misadministration was stupid enough to believe their own rhetoric in the buildup to war that there were "stockpiles" of WMD, the fact that Saddam did not use any to defend his country when the US invaded should have clued them in to the truth that there were no WMD. Is it possible that they tried to plant WMD before this year and that Plame was part of a "sting operation" to stop Cheney or Rummy from accomplishing it?

Just a theory.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1971177#1976491


This is what needs to be investigated. We know that Feith, Cambone and Hadley were key players in this. Wurmser is connected to Feith through AIPAC, I believe. Unless I'm confusing Wurmser with Hannah, I'll have to doublecheck my research on that.

[robertpaulsen]

11. Oh yeah. Here's more Wurmser info, courtesy of H2O Man.

Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy in the Pentagon, recruited David Wurmser to work for them immediately after 9-11. Wurmser set up an un-named intelligence "unit" at the Pentagon, which was responsible for much of the disinformation campaign that resulted in Americans initially supporting the Bush aggression in Iraq. Wurmser's goal was to support Wolfowitz's stance that Saddam was linked to 9-11, and that Iraq posed a threat to the United States.

Wurmser's wife is a neocon employed at the far-right Hudson Institute. She is also one of the top people at MEMRI, a "charity" that is widely recognized as an intelligence front. It was founded by Colonel Yigal Carmon, a 22-year veteran of Israeli intelligence. Mrs. Wurmser has long advocated for a stronger U.S. policy against both Iraq and Iran.

David Wurmser had previously worker for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. WINEP was founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, formerly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

On page 445 of Joseph Wilson's "The Politics of Truth," David Wurmser is identified as one of the administration officials who reportedly talked to journalists about Valerie Plame's status with the CIA.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4310764

This is from H2O Man's great thread titled: Feith-based intelligence: A Neocon Scandal.

[Me.]

13. Wurmser And A Guy Named Maloof

are in it all deeper than most people know. Together, they ran a small tight intel office that was an offshoot of the OSP. Supposedly, Wurmser is one of the men FitzG. is squeezing. To my mind that brings up the question of whether V. Plame found out what they were trying to do and that may have been the real reason she was outed. The second link is to an article written by Risen.

“Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Middle East specialist Harold Rhode recruit David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Wurmser is a known advocate of regime change in Iraq, having expressed his views in a 1997 op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal (see November 12, 1997) and having participated in the drafting of a 1996 policy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” (see July 8, 1996). Wurmser works at Feith's office, where he and F. Michael Maloof, a former aide to Richard Perle, head a secret intelligence unit, named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, or the “Wurmser-Maloof” project. Neither Wurmser nor Maloof are intelligence professionals. The four- to five- person unit, a “B Team” commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, uses powerful computers and software to scan and sort already-analyzed documents and reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other agencies in an effort to consider possible interpretations and angles of analysis that these agencies may have missed due to deeply ingrained biases and out-of-date worldviews.



September 20, 2001 Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Douglas Feith suggests in a draft memo that the US should consider “hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al-Qaeda target like Iraq.” Other regions he proposes attacking include South America and Southeast Asia. He reasons that an initial attack against such targets would “surprise ... the terrorists” and catch them off guard. According to Newsweek, the content of Feith's memo derives from the work of the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (see Shortly after September 11, 2001), a project headed by Michael Maloof and David Wurmser. The group suggested that an attack on the remote Triborder region, where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet and where Iranian-backed Hezbollah is said to have a presence, would have a ripple effect among international Islamic militant groups. Feith later says his memo merely expands upon ideas put forth by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a memo (see September 19, 2001) the secretary wrote the day before to Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The logic behind proposing strikes against targets outside of the Middle East, Feith says, was based on the need to “cast a wide net” and achieve “additional objectives,” such as creating fissures in the enemy network, highlighting “the global nature of the conflicts,” showing “seriousness of US military purpose,” and demonstrating that the “war would not be limited geographically to Afghanistan.”
People and organizations involved: F. Michael Maloof, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser” cont….

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-2682


“Neo-con Plans for Syria

The best way to understand neoconservative plans for Syria is by following David Wurmser, who is Vice-president Dick Cheney's adviser on Syrian policy. A pro-Likud ideologue, he is an advocate of pre-emptive war against Syria and Hezbollah, a position favored by other neocons, such as Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Richard Perle and Eliot Abrams.

David Wurmser has participated in several key reports outlining the neoconservative agenda in the Middle East. See the IRC. In 1996 he helped write a report for Israel's Likud party that urged Israel to break off then-ongoing peace initiatives. The report, which was titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" and was published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (an Israeli- and DC-based think tank) advised then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "to work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back" regional threats, help overthrow Saddam Hussein, and strike "Syrian military targets in Lebanon" and possibly in Syria proper. Coauthors of the report included Richard Perle, Meyrav Wurmser, and Douglas Feith.

In 2000, Wurmser worked on a strategy document published by Daniel Pipe's Middle East Forum and Ziad Abdelnour's U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon that advocated a wider U.S. role in Lebanon. The study, "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?" called for the United States to force Syria from Lebanon and to disarm it of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. It also argued that "Syrian rule in Lebanon stands in direct opposition to American ideals" and criticized the United States for engaging rather than confronting the regime. Among the documents signers were several soon-to-be Bush administration figures, including Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Michael Rubin, and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky. Other signers included Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Frank Gaffney.” Cont….

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2004/05/neo-con-plans-for-syria.htm

[robertpaulsen]

41. Great find Me. Maloof surfaces in dailykos research too!

Wonder why I missed this guy before. This maps out a lot of the neo-con relationshops:


Wurmser was member of OSP
by Southern Mouth
Mon Oct 24, 2005 at 01:58:02 PM PDT

I've been keeping notes from different articles (mostly info from Karen Kwiatkowski) about the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon. I hear lots of talk about the WH Iraq Group, but I've got my eye, as do others, on the Office of Special Plan.

I wanted to try to keep up with all the names to see if any surfaced in the Fitzgerald investigation. Wurmser is one. Thought these notes might be of interest.

Notes:

1. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, adamant hawks, rename the Northern Gulf Affairs Office on the Pentagon's fourth floor (in the seventh corridor of D Ring) the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) and increase its four-person staff to sixteen. Knight Ridder Newspapers, 8/16/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/02; New Yorker, 5/5/03; Inter Press Service, 8/7/03; American Conservative, 12/1/03; Tom Paine.com, 8/27/03; Mother Jones, 1/04 Sources: Greg Thielmann, Karen Kwiatkowski

* Southern Mouth's diary :: ::
*

2. The OSP bypasses established oversight procedures by sending its intelligence assessments directly to the White House and National Security Council without having them first vetted by a review process involving other US intelligence agencies. Guardian, 7/17/03; Salon, 7/16/03; New Yorker, 5/5/03; Mother Jones, 1/04 Sources: Greg Thielmann, David Obey

3. Their contacts in other agencies include: John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International; Bolton's advisor, David Wurmser, a former research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute, who was just recently working in a secret Pentagon planning unit at Douglas Feith's office, and Elizabeth Cheney, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs; Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser; Elliott Abrams, The National Security Council's top Middle East aide; and Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, James Woolsey and Kenneth Adelman of the Defense Policy Board. The office provides very little information about its work to other US intelligence offices.

4. During the run-up to the Iraq war, Gingrich often came up for closed-door meetings with William Luti, who in 1996 had served as a congressional fellow in Speaker of the House Gingrich's office.

5. OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. OSP's activities were a complete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."

6. Forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office

7. VP Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam.

8. When Cheney was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was.

9. Newt Gingrich resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.

10. William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.

11. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress (Chalabi)

12. "Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.

13. Longtime Pentagon official, Harold Rhode - officially assigned to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, an in-house Pentagon think tank headed by fellow neocon Andrew Marshall.

14. Other names: Michael Rubin and David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for AEI

13. Adding another layer of dubious quality to the endeavor was the man partnered with Wurmser, F. Michael Maloof, former aide to Perle

14. The new unit's (OSP) director was Abram N. Shulsky. By then, Wurmser had moved on to a post as senior adviser to Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

15. According to Kwiatkowski, Cheney had direct ties through Luti into NESA/OSP, a connection that was highly unorthodox.

16. Navy Lt. Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, who was a special assistant to Luti. "His job was to peruse the Arabic-language media to find articles that would incriminate Saddam Hussein about terrorism, and he translated these."

17. As OSP got rolling, Luti brought in Colonel Bruner.

18. The Pentagon announces that the Office of Special Plans will revert to its previous name, the "Northern Gulf Affairs Office". (I believe this was in July or August 2003.)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/15583/400


You see how all these scandals are connected through the same cast of characters? It's amazing.

edited to fix highlights

[Me.]

61. While It Was Connected To The OSP

Wurmser and Maloof's office was actually called the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, or the “Wurmser-Maloof” project and was a 2 man job.

[robertpaulsen]

62. CTEG. Everyone at DU should remember that group.

It took a while for me to process, but now I understand. The work of these turkeys was done at the behest of the DSM Masters of War.

Anyone doubt this is fascism we're living under?

[Me.]

67. You Might Also Find This Interesting

Maloof’s security clearance was revoked and that seemed to end his and Wurmser’s project. Wurmser then went to the state department. Did V Plame have a hand in his undoing?


U.S. revokes security clearance for Pentagon employee

By Warren P. Strobel

11/06/03: (Knight Ridder Newspapers)

“WASHINGTON - A veteran Pentagon employee who was a key player in the effort to find links between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida has been stripped of his security clearance, according to senior U.S. officials.

The employee, F. Michael Maloof, is associated with a Lebanese-American businessman who is under federal investigation for possible involvement in a gun-running scheme to Liberia, the West African nation embroiled in civil war. The businessman, Imad El Haje, approached Maloof on behalf of Syria to seek help in arranging a communications channel between Syria and the Defense Department.

Maloof is close to influential foreign policy hawks inside and outside government, some of whom lobbied vigorously to get his clearance restored despite objections from government security officers, one official said.

The officials involved all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified matters.” Cont…

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5165.htm

[robertpaulsen]

71. I sure do! This is also interesting: a Maloof-Judith Miller connection?

Notes on F. Michael Maloof

Is Maloof one of the Israeli moles operating under Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. It has come to my attention hat the DOJ is asking questions about the links between Michael Maloof and Judith Miller of the New York Times.


Read Israeli Moles in the Pentagon

Michael Maloof, a former journalist, closely linked to Richard Perle for whom he worked during the Reagan administration. Maloof was teamed with David Wurmser working for Douglas Feith. See "The Lie Factory" for an interesting account of how these men substituted propaganda for intelligence.

Partnered at the Department of Defense with David Wurmser, "Maloof, a former aide to Richard N. Perle in the 1980s Pentagon, was twice stripped of his high-level security clearances--once in late 2001 and again last spring, for various infractions. Maloof was also reportedly involved in a bizarre scheme to broker contacts between Iraqi officials and the Pentagon, channeled through Perle, in what one report called a 'rogue operation' outside official CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency channels." F. Michael Maloof - Disinfopedia

more...

http://www.sw-asia.com/People/Bio955.htm

[Me.]

80. That Really Piqued My Interest

Judith Miller is Unnamed Woman in AIPAC Spy Ring Indictment

“Judith Miller is a reporter for the New York Times. She has a long string of discredited articles that helped lead us into war in Iraq. Her actions leave question at to whether she is a Journalist or an Agent of Influence for the Likud Party. Has Judith Miller sold out her Journalistic Integrity? Or even worse has Judith Miller sold out her Country?

t has come to my attention hat the DOJ is asking questions about the links between Michael Maloof and Judith Miller of the New York Times. Maloof is a shadowy character who worked at the pentagon for the Cabal. Miller a reporter at the New York times worked hand in glove with a shameful cast of spies, agents of Influence, and men with dual loyalties including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Bill Luti, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Judy Miller was very much a part of the pre-war opperation that has led to more than 1000 American deaths in Iraq and continues to increase every day. Mossad fabrictaed information and used a number of sources including Ahmad Chalabi to disseminate the information. Suspected spies Michael Maloof and Larry Franklin working for Bill Luti and suspected spy Douglas J. Feith would then "stovepipe" the information to the White House. The same information would be disseminated by Judith Miller on the pages of the New York Times to make the disinformation look real. When you have Defense Department intelligence corroborated by the New York Times it looks very convincing especially when our ally Israel was confirming the stories.’ Cont…

http://www.sw-asia.com/People/IRI997.htm


Judith Miller: Just Another Cog in the Neocon Propaganda Machine
Wed Jul 13, 2005

“An older leak clue? This passage from an excellent Frank Foer piece on Judith Miller in New York magazine really kind of jumps out at me:

Iraq coverage didn’t just depend on Chalabi. It also relied heavily on his patrons in the Pentagon. Some of these sources, like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, would occasionally talk to her on the record. She relied especially heavily on the Office of Special Plans, an intelligence unit established beneath Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. The office was charged with uncovering evidence of Al Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein that the CIA might have missed. In particular, Miller is said to have depended on a controversial neocon in Feith’s office named Michael Maloof. At one point, in December 2001, Maloof’s security clearance was revoked. In April, Risen reported in the Times, “Several intelligence professionals say he came under scrutiny because of suspicions that he had leaked classified information in the past to the news media, a charge that Mr. Maloof denies.”

Jump out at you too? December 2001 happens to be the time period that Judith Miller apparently tipped off the Holy Land Foundation and associated Muslim charities that their offices were about to be raided by federal investigators. Seems Mr. Maloof might be a candidate for being the suspected leaker. But why would he have done this? Was he just trying to convey a hot tip to a reporter who had been following the two year probe of the charities' alleged connections to suspected terrorists already? Or was it designed to trip up the investigation itself? And if so, why?

Update: And why has Maloof been on "special detail" to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy until August 2004, three years after his security clearance was revoked?”cont…

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/07-13-05/discussion.cgi.8.html

[robertpaulsen]

112. Oh my! Is there anyone in neo-con circles Judy Miller ISN'T in bed with?

Thanks for illuminating yet another reason why I call this Plame/AIPACgate, she's a big link in both. I have no doubt she is some kind of intelligence operative (I know, in her case that's an oxymoron) and I doubt just for one organization or country. One summer in jail is too good for her.

I think we're going to see a whole lot of courtroom drama this year. I just hope the info we're unearthing on this thread comes out there as well.

[Me.]

118. What I Also Want To Know Is Why She Tipped Off The Charity

"December 2001 happens to be the time period that Judith Miller apparently tipped off the Holy Land Foundation and associated Muslim charities that their offices were about to be raided by federal investigators."

I always wondered if the so called charity had a tie in with Chalabi, but never have found anything supporting that. Also, you probably remember this is aNother FitzG. case. He subpoenaed the phone records of the NYT but a judge denied him access. I remember when she was making the rounds of the talk shows, before she was jailed, crowing about the fact that she had beaten him once and it was proof he was out of control.

[robertpaulsen]

60. Did a double take on your 2nd link. Are these morans planning Armageddon?

First, this paragraph made me :wow:

More recently Wurmser worked in the Pentagon intelligence unit set up by Under Sec Douglas Feith after the Sept 11 attacks to search for links between terrorist groups and host countries. James Risen of the NYTimes wrote in April that Wurmser, Feith and Michael Maloof, a former journalist, culled classified material, often uncorroborated CIA data, uncovering what Maloof calls 'tons of raw intelligence' that two were 'stunned' to find was not mentioned in CIA's finished reports; unit saw new alliances among Islamic terrorists such as Shiites and Sunnis and secular Arab regimes and gave senior Bush administration figures conclusions connecting Iraq and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Some intelligence experts charge unit had secret agenda to justify war and was staffed with people handpicked by conservatives like Richard N Perle to justify preordained conclusions; Patrick Lang says those brought in were not analysts but people who would deliver desired opinions; chart showing links between Feith, Maloof, third group member David Wurmser and Richard Perle, Stephen A Cambone, Iraqi exile figure Ahmad Chalabi and top officials briefed by unit: John R Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Dir George Tenet, national security adviser Stephen J Hadley and Vice Pres Cheney's aide I Lewis Libby (M)

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2004/05/neo-con-plans-for-syria.htm

Then I clicked the link in that paragraph to the Risen article. What a wealth of info! Is James Risen the only real reporter at NYT?

How Pair's Finding on Terror Led to Clash on Shaping Intelligence
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, April 27 — Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop in a windowless, cipher-locked room at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries.

The men culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the C.I.A. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Michael Maloof, one of the pair. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the C.I.A.'s finished reports."

snip

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating whether the unit — named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group by its creator, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy — exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify the war.

snip

Mr. Feith created his team a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks to study links between terrorist groups and potential state sponsors around the world. Mr. Maloof and his colleague, David Wurmser began work in October 2001 in a 15-by-15-foot space on the third floor of the Pentagon. The pair spent their days reading raw intelligence reports, many from the Central Intelligence Agency, in the Pentagon's classified computer system.

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/blogger/archive/2004_04_28_archive

Wurmser and Maloof, what an ugly pair of cherry-pickers!

[Me.]

65. Not As CT As One Might Think

Wurmser and his wife Meyrav are a very scary couple and nothing less than a complete subjugation of the ME will suit them and their neocon ideals. They wrote a paper, famous in neo circles called:

Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

“We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries. Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not secure "peace now." Our claim to the land —to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years--is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, "peace for peace," is a solid basis for the future.” cont

“Securing the Northern Border

Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

* striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.

* paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.

* striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.

Israel also can take this opportunity to remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime. Syria repeatedly breaks its word. It violated numerous agreements with the Turks, and has betrayed the United States by continuing to occupy Lebanon in violation of the Taef agreement in 1989. Instead, Syria staged a sham election, installed a quisling regime, and forced Lebanon to sign a "Brotherhood Agreement" in 1991, that terminated Lebanese sovereignty. And Syria has begun colonizing Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, while killing tens of thousands of its own citizens at a time, as it did in only three days in 1983 in Hama.

Under Syrian tutelage, the Lebanese drug trade, for which local Syrian military officers receive protection payments, flourishes. Syria’s regime supports the terrorist groups operationally and financially in Lebanon and on its soil. Indeed, the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon has become for terror what the Silicon Valley has become for computers. The Bekaa Valley has become one of the main distribution sources, if not production points, of the "supernote" — counterfeit US currency so well done that it is impossible to detect.

Text:

Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria’s require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side’s good faith. It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive toward its neighbors, criminally involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations." cont...

http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm


edited to correct dupe paragraphs

[robertpaulsen]

69. Here's more from Apocalypse Wurmser

This written 8 months prior to 9/11:

What Was Cheney's Mid-East Adviser Thinking?

Middle East "War:" How Did It Come to This?
by David Wurmser , Published originally in the Washington Times.
American Enterprise Institute, Jan. 1, 2001.
Our Jerusalem-dot-com, Jan. 29, 2001.

"Israel and the United States should adopt a coordinated strategy to regain the initiative and reverse their regionwide strategic retreat. They should broaden the conflict to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza. That would reestablish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal."
Wurmser was moved into the State Dept., then became Cheney's Middle-East Advisor.

http://zfacts.com/p/771.html


Can you say MEGALOMANIAC?

[Me.]

70. What's Really Stunning To Me

Is how far under the radar this guy has flown.

[global1]

98. Wurmser & Wife - And A Noble Cause......

Read the following passage and note that they cite a 'noble' cause. SEE SENTENCE THAT IS ALL CAPS BELOW.

Could this be the 'noble cause' that * refers to when he talks about Iraq?


Wurmser and his wife Meyrav are a very scary couple and nothing less than a complete subjugation of the ME will suit them and their neocon ideals. They wrote a paper, famous in neo circles called:

Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

“We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries. Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not secure "peace now." OUR CLAIM TO THE LAND - TO WHICH WE HAVE CLUNG FOR HOPE FOR 2000 YEARS -- IS LEGITIMATE AND NOBLE. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, "peace for peace," is a solid basis for the future.”

[Me.]

111. Certainly Within The Realm Of Possibility

This is a very scary sentence: "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, "peace for peace," is a solid basis for the future.”

[Just Me]

8. Additional evidence the neoconsters intentionally defrauded the USA!

Again, I ask, why hasn't the FBI put these sons-a-bitches in handcuffs yet?

[arcane1]

47. hand-cuffs are too good for them

let's bring back the stockades, and let families of dead Iraqis, 9/11 victims, and dead U.S. soldiers lob rotten fruit and feces at them 24/7

[G_j]

9. that is just too wacky to believe!

:sarcasm:

[EVDebs]

17. It's all part of Bush's 'incompetence and ineffectiveness' strategery

This is discussed in a post on the WH staffer who espoused Sun Tzu's Art of War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=55585&mesg_id=60263

They are the artistes of war, dontchaknow.

[Sydnie]

19. Wasn't there some speculation that that is why they wanted

Brewster Jennings outted? Wasn't it further speculated that Plame found out what they were doing, not from them but from her contacts?

Wish I could find the thread now ....

[EVDebs]

25. So why did Andrea Mitchell say Plame's name was common knowledge ?

Who does she work for ? Really ? I note that Alan Greenspan's name is on the Rodriguez RICO lawsuit on 9-11, hint hint.

[Sydnie]

36. Ohhh Doris Day and Rock Hudson

I see .... Pillow Talk.

[Burried News]

73. Poster was Peace Patriot. If that helps.

The link below is not what you want but might aid others not familiar with all this.

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/PNAC_101

[stellanoir]

20. It is IMHO the ultimate irony

that they tried to plant WMD's but they botched the illegal invasion so severely that they lacked the security to do so. Believe it or not, I could sense them trying to do so at the time. My right winged relative said back then, "well they'd better do so." I said, "they won't be able to."

Karma baby.

A war based on lies is never winnable.

Don't tell that to all those on both sides afflicted or deceased with torture, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous though.

These are war crimes of monumental proportions.

I used to think agent orange and peraquat (sp?) were wicked enough. Now I am suitably "shocked and awed" Hope the governement is pleased with itself. I am not.

[mattclearing]

21. Nice that this is finally coming out.

I think it's actually most surprising that they never actually managed to successfully plant the WMD's.

[happydreams]

22. David Kay and Hatfill made the WMDs to be planted

Hatfill was probably a fall guy.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/267301.shtml

[EVDebs]

29. Giant vats of butyric acid for stink bombs OH MY !

Saddam wouldn't dare do us in with those ! And at night he'll secretly krazy glue the locks at the NSA building so no one can get in ! This is predictable since he's reportedly a graduate of Faber College.

[happydreams]

37. It makes sense. I mean Kay was hired to find the WMD's that

the Bushies knew weren't there by Saddam's hand. Hatfill worked on manufacturing them with Kay. Kay was the only guy they could depend on to find them. Maybe Kay got cold feet after US troops killed some CIA agents trying too plant them.

[EVDebs]

40. Task Force 121 and the Israeli tie in...check it out.

We've been played by BOTH the Iranians and the Israelis. Chalabi and the Iranian tie in. Lovely.

Let's give them all Medals of Freedom, shall we ?

[Just Me]

33. Hatfill? The guy investigated in the anthrax crimes?

:shrug:

[happydreams]

38. Yea, he apparently worked with Kay manufacturing the WMD's.

Google: Hatfill+Kay+WMD.

[Just Me]

46. No shit!!! WOW!!!

Just, WOW!!!

[happydreams]

51. This story is really confusing: Hatfill fallguy, DAvid Kelley Death, CIA

agents killed trying to plant WMDs.

FDR said nothing in politics happens by coincidence. I'll take his word for it.

[Just Me]

57. FDR was definitely right about that: NOTHING in politics happens,...

...by coincidence, EVER!!!

[eridani]

24. Scott Ritter sez

--that planted WMD could be easily dated by analysis. Of course it's possible that they had a plan to scotch demands for analysis, but it still would have been risky to try to pull this off.

[AntiFascist]

26. K & R n./t

[global1]

31. These People *C - Nothing Is Beneath Them, If They Where Trying....

to plant WMD's - why is it so hard to believe that they had something to do with 9/11? They will stop at nothing.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

35. It's easy for me to believe they were involved in 9/11 today

It was hard to believe at the time, but their ruthlessness and lack of concern for America makes it clear they are capable of LIHOP or MIHOP.

[EVDebs]

44. Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceit on Pearl Harbor and FDR's

FDR's LIHOP, since Stinnett is a big fan of Bush, makes it seem that they viewed a 9-11 'New Pearl Harbor' as their birthright as neofascists. They aren't fit to carry FDR's jockstrap and they think they can pull off these kinds of stunts. Absolute idiots. Certifiable lunatics. Amazing imbicles.

Where these numbskulls went wrong is they thought they could pull off a MIHOP, instead of showing patience ... they lack the virtues of true warriors. They aren't Vulcans or Knights, they're stableboys.

[Peace Patriot]

39. The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate.

(I'm cross-posting from the other thread on this new revelation--the basics of the WMD-planting theory, as follows:)

-------------

These may be the teams whose plans to plant WMDs in Iraq were foiled.

Edited on Thu Jan-05-06 12:51 PM by Peace Patriot


There were several reports in the Islamic press in March 2003 of foiled US attempts to plant WMDs in Iraq, one in Basra involving a covert WMD shipment that had false Red Cross labels on it, and another at an unidentified location that met with "friendly fire." There may have been other efforts later on. If true, these are the ones that got noticed.

The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate is that there is a connection between these highly deceitful and dangerous, off-the-record Rumsfeld projects, and the outing of Valerie Plame and the entire CIA Brewster-Jennings counter-proliferation network--which disabled all the above-board WMD-monitoring projects and put all of its covert agents/contacts at great risk of getting killed. The theory also posits a possible connection to the death of the Brits chief WMD expert David Kelly, in the same week. Here's the time-line:

Late May 2003: Kelly starts whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about exaggerated pre-war WMD intel.

Mid-June 2003: Judith Miller meets with Scooter Libby (about Plame).

Late June 2003: Kelly is mysteriously outed to his bosses, interrogated at a safe house, and threatened with the Official Secrets Act in an effort to find out what ELSE he knows.

July 7, 2003*: Tony Blair is informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--not had said, COULD say. (Hutton report.)

July 14, 2003: Plame outed (by Novak).

July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers searched.

July 22, 2003: CIA/Brewster-Jennings entire counter-proliferation group outed (also by Novak).

------------------

IF the "uncomfortable things" that Kelly "could say" had to do with a Bushite plot to plant WMDs in Iraq, one thing he might have known was who foiled that plot.

The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate goes back to the creation of the "crude" Niger forgeries, which were so "crude" that they may have been INTENDED to be exposed as forgeries, in order to draw the CIA into a public position of no nukes in Iraq--and then, Part 2 of the plot, would have been the phony "find" of the planted nukes in order to discredit the honest part of the CIA and make it more purge-able by Bushites, as well as reaping enormous political benefit for Bush/Blair and the cause of slaughtering innocent Muslims to get their oil.

Another part of the theory: Rumsfeld positioned Judith Miller to enact the "find" of the nukes in Iraq, giving her a special "embed" contract signed by himself to accompany the US troops who were "hunting" for the WMDs. (She seemed to have extraordinary authority in that effort--for a reporter.)

Kelly was an old hand at Iraq, and a top scientist, who believed in his work of non-proliferation. He supported the invasion--he wanted Saddam ousted--but something turned him around about the war in spring 2003, after the invasion, and he began whistleblowing about the war's false premises. He had friends in Iraq. He was in a good position to hear about a WMD-planting plot (and its foiling), and there were Islamic news reports about it. Discovery of such a plot seems like a good candidate for what turned him around.

*July 6. July 7. Wilson published his article about the phony Niger claims on July 6. This appears to be the trigger for Treasongate (the outing of Plame). But is it? There is evidence that the Bushites EXPECTED his article. (He'd been talking to them, trying to get them to back off that claim, for months.) But what they may NOT have expected is Kelly's whistleblowing and (if true) his knowledge of their dirty scheme to actually plant the nukes. If the WMD-planting schemes were the "uncomfortable things" that Blair was apprised of on July 7 (that Kelly "could say"), and Blair told Bush (they were in close communication at that time), then we may have the real cause of the apparent panic among the Bushites that week--for instance, their calls to at least SIX reporters (six journalist witnesses to treason) in the week of July 6-12, in what looks like a very rushed and foolish effort to find a patsy newsman to immediately out Plame/Brewster-Jennings, an effort that put numerous top Bushites at maximum risk of treason charges, and for which Rovian revenge against Wilson was a cover story.

On the day he died, July 17, David Kelly emailed Judith Miller (yup, they were old buds), stating his concern about the "many dark actors playing games." She wrote his obit news article for the NYT a couple of days later, and failed to mention this email, or her close connections to Kelly.

He had been through a rough couple of months--big media controversy in England (black-holed news story here)--but thought it would all blow over. He was looking forward to his daughter's wedding and returning to Iraq. His "dark actors" comment may have had to do with the mystery of how he got outed (a guess). He had promised his bosses he wasn't going to reveal any "state secrets." After interrogating him and threatening him, they outed his name to the press, and sent him home without protection and apparently without surveillance (!?). He went for his normal afternoon walk, and, according to the official story, sat down under a tree, out in the cold and the rain, took some painkillers (not enough to kill him), slit one wrist, and bled to death outdoors all night.

The Hutton inquiry ignored: 1) reports by paramedics of not enough blood at the scene for the method of death; 2) body was moved; 3) unlikely method of suicide for a top scientist (and a man--a notable "tough guy"); 4): no note, no evidence of despair (on the contrary, he was forward-looking); 5) many forensic experts objecting to the conclusion of suicide.

The facts just don't add up for a conclusion of suicide. But if, upon a real inquiry, it could be determined with good certainty that it was, what drove him to it could have been what he had found out about his government (profound disillusionment--no sign of it though), or their threats against him or his family. Simply being in the midst of a media/gov't controversy does not seem sufficient to drive Kelly to kill himself. He was an experienced hand at media relations (as well as at WMD inspections in Iraq and Russia). But gov't bullying and threats could conceivably have led him to feel trapped or despairing (again--no sign of it).

Whether he was assassinated (likely), or committed suicide (unlikely), is not critical to the WMD-planting theory of Treasongate, except as to the level of desperation of the people who were outing Plame/BJ. Their reason for outing Plame/BJ could be to cover up their WMD-planting scheme, whether or not Kelly was killed, and even whether or not he knew of their schemes. (Also, possibly he knew something ELSE.)

One of the Islamic press articles said that the whistleblower (a person named Nella Rogers) was a Pentagon debriefer who had heard descriptions of an effort to plant WMDs in Iraq that met with "friendly fire." She assumed that it was a CIA operation that had been foiled. But, given all of the above, it seems far more likely that it was Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, operating contrary to CIA and US policy, and engaging in proliferation in an effort to deceive the public.

I've wondered about the "Rome group"--the ones who probably cooked up the "crude" Niger forgeries, and the presence at that meeting of the notorious Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. I suspect that they were cooking up more than easily detectable forgeries.

This theory of Treasongate is just a theory, but it continues to hold up well as new information has emerged. I would treat it as a plausible and useful working hypothesis.

There are other theories of why Plame/BJ was outed--that the BJ network was getting close to Saudi/Bush/9/11 money connections, dirty Cheney arms dealings, or other Bush Cartel crime. It's quite possible the Bushites had multiple reasons for getting rid of honest CIA operations. However, the coincidence of Plame/Kelly dates, and the matter at hand when those events occurred, the thing on everybody's mind--the big "hunt" for WMDs in Iraq--and the feel of rush and panic in the way Plame/BJ was outed, all point to a specific trigger that week, and the choice (apparently) is between the Wilson publication (July 6), and Kelly's whistleblowing and subsequent interrogation (July 7).

That Valerie Plame's career was ruined and her life's work destroyed--with some of her agents/contacts possibly killed, or at the least disabled--and David Kelly, working on the same issue, in the same kind of controversy, ended up dead, all in the same week, seems a bit much of a coincidence. TWO of our top non-proliferation experts--the very people we need most--swept off the scene in one week, within the two governments who claimed to be so concerned about WMDs that they had to kill tens of thousands of innocent people because of it.

It's an old saw, I know, but it sure rings true here: sometimes we fail to see the forest for the trees.

[Peace Patriot]

42. One of the better objections to this theory, and my answer to it.

(Also a cross-post...)

Here's a good objection that has come up, re: the WMD-planting theory of Treasongate. The Raw Story article gets into it, at the end:

"The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.

“'But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,' the source added.

"Former and current US intelligence officers explain that such forensics is essential and would have in fact proved if a weapons stash found was using Iraqi methodology.

“'A good example of how forensics is used can be found in the recent development around enriched uranium isotopes found on centrifuges in Iran,' one said. “'ran claimed to have purchased the centrifuges from Pakistan, but certain people pushing for war with Iraq were claiming that this was evidence of Iraqis reconstituting their nuclear weapons program. The forensics showed that the Iranians were telling the truth and that they in fact had purchased the items from Pakistan, a US ally.”

------------------------

It's true that nuke materials have signatures, as do nuke weapons programs, but consider this:

1. Would un-bribable, un-threatenable, truly independent experts ever have been let near that evidence? (Keep in mind that the Bushites forced the UN weapons inspectors out of the country.)

2. Is it not possible that Manucher Ghorbanifar (life-long dealer in illicit weapons in the Middle East), perhaps in cahoots with Chalabi (a double-agent with Iran) could have procured nukes or other WMDs that could pass the "smell test"?

3. Since when did having bad evidence ever stop the Bushites from claiming things--and getting away with the most outrageous lies? They constantly work the newsstream to make the false seem true and the true seem false. That's their M.O. They fuzz up and smear over matters of evidence and truth. And the US war profiteering corporate news monopolies give them every chance to do so. The lapdog press has gotten a little more nippy these days; keep in mind how they were THEN. The Bush Cartel could get away with ANYTHING (and still pretty much does).

I'm no expert on this. In my ignorance, it sounds like a pretty good objection to the WMD-planting theory, for a rational scientific mind. Not BushWorld.

----------------------

Re: Judith Miller. She was leading the US troops around in Iraq, pointing them here and there, and threatening them with her Pentagon connections when they wouldn't do things her way. She became a real annoyance to the commanders in the field. And if you presume that she was in on the WMD-planting scheme, and knew where (or approx where) the phony stuff was going to be, it all starts to make sense.

Also, if you backtrack and realize that all the Bushites and NeoCons and warmongers like Miller KNEW there were no WMDs in Iraq (because they were all going to such trouble to manufacture the case for it, out of whole cloth), why did they purposefully prep the US public and the world for a "find"--with all this high profile "hunting" and the hype that preceded it--and the continued hype throughout the "hunt"? You'd think they would have dropped the hype the minute they set foot in Iraq. Instead, they went on with it all spring/early summer, I think in the continued expectation that one of their WMD-planting efforts would pan out.

It's kind of like election fraud. When you see how the Bushites set up our election system, with Bushite corporations owning and controlling the vote tabulation with "trade secret," proprietary programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls, and $4 billion from a Bushite Congress to bribe the states to convert to expensive electronic systems on a crash-course basis (insecure, hackable machines that election officials don't really know much about), you gotta figure they did all that for a REASON. If they had wanted a transparent election in 2004, we would have had one. It's not rocket science. So, they went to all this trouble to create a NON-transparent election system so that maybe Kerry could get elected? I don't think that was ever a possibility.

Same thing with their capabilities in Iraq. If they set it up to lie, cheat and steal, they WILL. If they bring the entire US military machine down upon a near-defenseless Iraq, and bomb tens of thousands of innocents, and come in and immediately set up torture prisons, and permit widespread chaos and looting so that no one knows what is going on, and if they're dealing with illicit characters like Chalabi and Ghorbanifar--in short, if they set up conditions so that they CAN slip WMDs in and plant them, they WILL. Or they will try to.

That's not to say they DID. It's just to say that Bushite lying, cheating and stealing is a reasonable beginning hypothesis for a number of inexplicable events, and that, in this case--as with election fraud--the more evidence that emerges, the more likely it becomes that that's what they did--they tried to plant the weapons, they got foiled, and Treasongate is the coverup.

[happydreams]

45. Heavy stuff. But if the Bushies could keep the

investigation and analysis in house, so to speak, then they could pull it off IMHO.

[Just Me]

53. Well, hell, they willingly deceived the American people!!!

Why on earth would I NOT believe they are capable of engaging in other deceptive activities? :shrug: Shit! They're whole ideology rationalizes deception,...'cause, apparently, the American people are too stupid to actually advance their own interests. :grr: Complete assholes!!!

[robertpaulsen]

49. Thanks for spelling it out so articulately, Peace Patriot.

As you can see on post 10, I was entertaining this possibility on the Plame Threads in 2004, but I left it out of American Judas because, although I believed it occurred, I wasn't sure how to tie it into the outing of Valerie Plame. You did a great job detailing how this could happen and now Raw Story shows how this was done through OSP. These same characters are neck-deep in Plame/AIPACgate.

It sure is great to see more pieces of the puzzle fall into place!

[happydreams]

52. I second that thanks. Great work PP.

[Octafish]

81. Third!

Read in the voice of Ben Stein: What a coincidence.

That Valerie Plame's career was ruined and her life's work destroyed--with some of her agents/contacts possibly killed, or at the least disabled--and David Kelly, working on the same issue, in the same kind of controversy, ended up dead, all in the same week, seems a bit much of a coincidence. TWO of our top non-proliferation experts--the very people we need most--swept off the scene in one week, within the two governments who claimed to be so concerned about WMDs that they had to kill tens of thousands of innocent people because of it.

Read in the voice of Halle Berry: Pure gold.

Darn smiley faces :)

[happydreams]

133. Kick!!

[Nothing Without Hope]

89. Yes, Peace Patriot - thanks for your effort and insight. Let's hope we

can stimulate more people to ask the questions that have been avoided and FINALLY GET THE ANSWERS.

Otherwise, we can expect the attack of Iran - probably with mini-nukes - within a few months. LOTS of evidence for that, and the neocon warmongering machine - complete with the invocation of "mushroom clouds" - has been blasting for some time.

[bleever]

75. Kudos to you, Peace Patriot, for seeing the forest for the trees.

Your foresight on this issue was just great.

And...I think there are other stories where the official story, and the suspected back story, are still one or two levels removed from what the actual truth is.


:thumbsup:

[FredStembottom]

92. I agree. I caught your 1st conjecture

on Plame/BJ/planted WMD's - and it really stuck with me. The new pieces of the puzzle seem to fit right into that original insight!:thumbsup:

[Usrename]

77. What about the 200 nuclear triggers???

Two guys were caught buying 200 nuclear triggers on the black market. According to Sibel Edmonds, one got a light sentence and the other got off. Who are these people and why would they want 200 nuclear triggers? Remember she can only talk about what is in the public domain. She must be trying to lead us in the right direction.

Check it out. It fits all the dots you are trying to connect.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5077724#5081680

[happydreams]

43. Pentagon whistleblower Nelda Rogers on WMD's planted

I wonder what happened to this woman? Is she still with us?




http://www.singlenesia.com/news/cache/?p=030812-02&l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iraqwar.ru%2Firaq-read_article.php%3FarticleId%3D9474%26lang%3Den



Here is another link:

July 2, 2003
Pentagon Whistleblower Reveals CIA/DoD Fiascos

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt. Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department, the Bush administration's assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a CIA plan to "plant" WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by "friendly fire."
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266752.shtml 20.06.2003 <08:07>

A DoD whistleblower details an attempt by a covert US team to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The team was later killed by friendly fire due to CIA incompetence. In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw.com <http://www.almartinraw.com/> has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert-operations team had planted "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMDs) in Iraq, then "lost" them when the team was killed by so-called "friendly fire."

The Pentagon whistleblower, Nelda Rogers, is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the Defense Department. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, "Ms. Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense."

The information that is being leaked out is information "obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the Department of Defense and/or the Central Intelligence Agency. "According to Ms. Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq," reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides "Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence."

Al Martin is a retired Lt. Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider, " and he is considered one of America's foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms. Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by ex-military personnel and that "the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace."

According to Al Martin Raw.com, "the Ag Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, and NSA and others." Accordng to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms. Rogers' report concerns a covert operation which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities.

The problem became evident when "the operation in Iraq involved 100

[HereSince1628]

50. Is this in Conyer's "Constitutional Crisis? If it is. I'll accept it.

Something pubilshed in 2003 would surely have been examined by the Committee Staff doing the leg work.

[Nothing Without Hope]

48. ***Here is a post by Peace Patriot on planted WMDs and a wider scheme

from months ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5049555

Read the whole thing - it will make you think. Peace Patriot also believes that Judith Miller was on-site in Iraq (with her oddly high-level security clearance) in order to "report" the "discovered" WMDs. Another plausible Peace Patriot theory: David Kelly was assassinated because he knew too much about the scheme. (One of his last emails apparently was to Judith Miller.)

K & R - this needs to be documented and exposed.

ETA - this was posted before I saw Peace Patriot's additional posts upthread in this current thread. All of these aspects of the story do fit together and explain a great deal of otherwise unexplained facts. I also never believed that punishing Joseph Wilson for something he had ALREADY done was the only motivation for the panicked calling of multiple journalists to out Valerie Plame and destroy the secrecy of her cover company. There had to be another reason - and removing the WMD oversight and expertise of Plame and Brewster-Jennings in time to conceal the WMD plant mission would certainly be worthy of some panic. Wurmser was probably centrally involved in both Plamegate and the WMD planting scheme.

[glitch]

56. This theory is more plausible than anything coming of corporate media. nt

[Old and In the Way]

76. The corporate media has a vested interest in not connecting the dots.

It's been AWOL since the early 80's, I think. Except to cover busted RE deals, blowjobs, and missing white rich girls, of course.

To all the great contributors on this thread.....:toast: You have done a fantastic job in weaving a plausible, even compelling narative of how this shadow government really operates. When will we start awarding Pullitzers for Blogger collaborative journalism? There is no fine example than this thread.

[robertpaulsen]

64. Judith Miller was DEFINITELY in Iraq for this, if I interpret RS correctly

Task Force 20 and other units

The primary operational team responsible for the early activity on the ground in Iraq was Task Force 20, which was comprised of CIA, FBI, Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group. Task Force 20 consisted of roughly a 40-man assault team and a private aviation unit provided by Special Operations Command. Sources believe this was the team tasked with the three objectives of securing the fallen pilot, the weapons, and the dictator.

Other groups operating at this same time included the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a unit of roughly 900 specialists, made up of smaller tactical teams, who followed on the heels of TF20. Judith Miller was embedded with one of the units of the 75th.

Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to and after combat operations began. Under the supervision of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy. According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently under investigation by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Secretive_military_unit_sought_to_solve_0105.html

Dovetails nicely with Peace Patriot's theory, I do believe.

[Nothing Without Hope]

83. ***Fits Judith Miller's weirdly high-level security clearance in Iraq:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5076864
thread title (10/16/05): 'Hidden Scandal' in Miller Story, Charges Former CBS Newsman
(thread based on Editor & Publisher article. Excerpt:

There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.

In an era where the Bush Administration seeks to conceal mountains of government activity under various levels of security classification, why would any self-respecting news organization or individual journalist agree to become part of such a system? Readers would be right to question whether a reporter is operating under a security clearance and, by definition, withholding critical information. Does a newspaper not have the obligation to disclose to its readers when a reporter is not only embedded with a military unit but also officially proscribed in what she may report without running afoul of espionage laws? Was that ever done in Ms. Miller's articles from Iraq?

Here is another thread on this story:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1853828
thread title (10/16/05): 'Hidden Scandal' in Miller Story, Charges Former CBS Newsman

[Nothing Without Hope]

87. ***Wash Post article on Judith Miller's bizarre behavior in Iraq:

Posted by cal04 as a reply in this important thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1853828&mesg_id=1853904

Reply #21 (by cal04): here's a story from the Washington Post:Embedded Reporter's role

Embedded Reporter's Role In Army Unit's Actions Questioned by Military

Howard Kurtz

New York Times reporter Judith Miller played a highly unusual role in an Army unit assigned to search for dangerous Iraqi weapons, according to U.S. military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned into what one official called a "rogue operation." More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, on one occasion accompanying Army officers to Chalabi's headquarters, where they took custody of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law. She also sat in on the initial debriefing of the son-in-law, these sources say. Since interrogating Iraqis was not the mission of the unit, these officials said, it became a "Judith Miller team," in the words of one officer close to the situation.

The MET Alpha team was charged with examining potential Iraqi weapon sites in the war's aftermath. Military officers critical of the unit's conduct say its members were not trained in the art of human intelligence -- that is, eliciting information from prisoners and potential defectors. Specialists in such interrogations say the initial hours of questioning are crucial, and several Army and Pentagon officials were upset that MET Alpha officers were debriefing Hussein son-in-law Jamal Sultan Tikriti. "This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intelligence," said one military officer who, like several others interviewed, declined to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. But, the officer said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. . . . She ended up almost hijacking the mission."

An Army officer, who regarded Miller's presence as "detrimental," said: "Judith was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat," this person said, and MET Alpha "was allowed to bend the rules."

(rest of the article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A28385-2003Jun24¬Found=true)

Note that Judith Miller was basically running her military "team" and threatened people who opposed her actions not only with reports in the NY Times but with Donald Rumsfeld as her supporter.

[lala_rawraw]

90. She was with MET Alpha

But they were deployed out in May and by the June she was already in DC. So hard to place her there at the time.

[robertpaulsen]

110. Thanks for clarifying the timeline, lala_rawraw.

It's difficult sometimes to keep track chronologically of all the neo-con shenanigans. Seems like Judy's involvement with the attempted WMD plant was peripheral, but had it actually worked, given her OSP connections I'm sure she would have been placed at the forefront to scoop an "amazing discovery".

Keep up the great work! Raw Story slays!

:yourock:

[Nothing Without Hope]

84. ***DAVID KELLY'S fatal (?) connection with JUDITH MILLER - re WMDs?

Peace Patriot had a very interesting comment in one of the threads on how Judith Miller's high-level security clearance in Iraq was a hidden scandal in itself. In the reply, PP lays out part of the logic for bellieving that David Kelly was - fatally? - caught in the planted WMD mission:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1853828&mesg_id=1856878

Reply #88 (by Peace Patriot). The known facts seem to point more to his promise NOT to tell.

I don't think he intended to tell all he knew, just to alert the public to the fact that we had been lied to. In his last emails, he says he thinks it will all blow over in a week. He is looking forward to returning to Iraq, and to his daughter's wedding. And he says somewhere that he'd assured his bosses that he didn't reveal any "state secrets." It sounds very much like he felt he'd done his duty to the public, promised his bosses that was the end of it, and didn't expect further controversy or trouble. His whistleblowing was anonymous. They hunted him down within gov't (somebody outed him, it appears), interrogated him for days, threatened him with prosecution--just for saying the intel had been exaggerated (something that was not all that earth-shaking--a matter words, and emphasis). And he back-tracked (recanted some of it) and tried to protect himself. But their reaction to him was extraordinary. They had to have been worried about far more than "sexed up" intel.

I think he still trusted Miller, and who knows what he may have disclosed to her? She seems all sympathetic about his plight--the plight of a WMD expert who had just been whistleblowing about her pet project, Iraq WMDs, casting doubt upon the WMD justifications for the war. Was her sympathy genuine? (Is she thinking about him now?)

I think her NYT obit on Kelly is revealing in what it doesn't say--she fails to disclose her close connections to him--and also in what it does say. I think she puts words in his mouth, around paragraph 15-16, criticizing the U.S. troops for not looking hard enough for the WMDs in Iraq. She fails to put quotes around those remarks, and it doesn't fit his state of mind (that of a whistleblower). It does serve her interests, though, and reflects HER attitude toward the U.S. troops who were looking for WMDs. I think it's possible she made it up.

A friend of Kelly's (who has never been identified, that I know of), who he says he ran into at RUSI (Royal United Services Institute--which concerns military and security matters), warned him that his bosses suspected that he was the whistleblower. He then wrote a letter to his line manager, disclosing his contacts with the BBC. (He didn't seem to think he was under any security rules about it--he'd very often briefed the press on WMDs issue, as a UN inspector.) It seemed to catch him off guard, that they knew it was him. This was occurring the first week of July 2003.

How did they find out that he was the BBC whistleblower? Well, all I can say is that Judith Miller was involved in outing somebody else, for the same reason, during the same two-week period, and, if I was a prosecutor, I'd sure ask her some questions about it.

Also in that same thread, EuroObserver posted some of Dr. Kelly's last emails, including one to Judith Miller. They are still archived at the site of the Hutton investigation. Here's EuroObserver's reply, including links to the archived emails:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1853828&mesg_id=1855864

Reply #81 (by Euro Observer). Here is a sample of Dr. David Kelly's last emails (note the plural

Several were sent at the same time as a batch (guess he was using a dial-up connection at his home). There are more at the link below. The first, we know, is Dr. Kelly's last email to Judy. .pdf copies of the original printouts are on the Hutton site at the links given. Note that in his emails Dr. Kelly often placed two spaces instead of a fullstop or period.

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0076.pdf
From: David Kelly
Sent: 17 July 2003 11:18
To: {deleted}
Subject: you
I will wait until the end of the week before judging - many dark actors playing games.
Thanks for your support I appreciate your friendship at this time.
Best,
David

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0071.pdf
From : David Kelly
Sent: 17 July 2003 11:18
To: {deleted}
Subject : RE (no subject)
Many thanks for your thoughts It has been difficult Hopefully it will all blow over by the end of the week and I can travel to Baghdad and get on with the real work
Best wishes,
David

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0072.pdf
From: David Kelly
Sent: 17 July 2003 11:18
To : {deleted}
Subject:
Many thanks for your thoughts and prayers It has been a remarkably tough time .
Should all blow over by early next week then I will travel to Baghdad a week friday .
I have had to keep a low profile which meant leaving home for a week Back now.
With best wishes and thanks for your support
David

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0073.pdf
From : David Kelly
Sent: 17 Jul 2003 11 :18
To: {deleted}
Subject : RE I'm in town
Many thanks for the email {deleted} let me know that you had been trying to contact me but I have been keeping low on MOD" advice If all blows over by the beginning of next week I will get to Baghdad soon
Regards,
David

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/com/com_4_0078.pdf
From: David Kelly
Sent: 17 July 2003 11.18
To : {deleted}
Subject: RE "Media" presentation
Quite a week If all blows over I will be in Baghdad next friday Hope to see you shortly after that
All the best,
David

...

The data from Dr. Kelly's computer (including more emails) we're allowed to see is archived at the official Hutton Inquiry site here: http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/evidence-lists/evidence-com.htm

Keeping all that is being discussed in the current thread in mind, think again about that email David Kelly sent to Judith Miller on July 17, 2003, the first in the selection excerpted above:
"I will wait until the end of the week before judging - many dark actors playing games."

As we see from this BBC timeline, Dr. Kelly died either the same day or the next:
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/find_out/guides/2003/david_kelly_inquiry/newsid_3084000/3084865.stm):

17 July: Dr Kelly left his house saying he was going for a walk. His family called the police when he didn't return.

18 July: Police found Dr Kelly's body. Later the prime minister's official spokesman said an independent judicial inquiry would be held.

[DemReadingDU]

59. K&R

[happydreams]

63. An Aussie link to planted WMD's?Another possible whistleblower.

this article is no longer avail so i will post it all mods..

i had it in my files with Nelda article..

from austrailia

NEWS.com.au | Sacked WMD adviser: I won't lie (April 11, 2004)

Sacked WMD adviser: I won't lie
By Lincoln Wright
April 11, 2004

A SENIOR Defence adviser has been sacked after refusing to write media briefings that supported claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Engineer and analyst Jane Errey was an adviser to former Chief Defence Scientist Dr Ian Chessell and wrote briefings for Defence Minister Robert Hill. Her job at Defence gave her access to secret intelligence on Iraq's weaponry from the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessments.
Ms Errey claims that on the day before the Iraq war started, she was asked to write what she believed was "sexed-up" propaganda about Iraq's capabilities.

The next day - March 20 last year - she went on holiday rather than write what she claimed would have been a misleading briefing.

But she was sacked last Monday, after more than nine years at Defence, on "performance grounds".

"I felt like I was part of the propaganda machine. As a public servant I shouldn't be expected to write propaganda," she told the Sunday Herald Sun.

A superior had instructed her to compile media advice on WMDs for Senator Hill, advice Ms Errey said would have misled the public.

"Anything that I was doing with respect to the war was making me uncomfortable," Ms Errey said. "Then to have to brief the minister and fundamentally give him - even though I didn't write it - lines of propaganda that I didn't believe with respect to the war was beyond what I was prepared to do. I wouldn't lie or mislead the public."

The next day, as the war began, she submitted a leave application. Ms Errey said that Dr Chessell suggested that, considering her views on the war, maybe she should not be working at Defence.

"He told me that he was prepared to sign the leave form, but he thought that I should consider whether working for Defence was the right job for me," she said.

Ms Errey's leave ran out and after taking sick leave, she applied unsuccessfully for leave without pay. Since July, she has worked at a community organisation.

As Dr Chessell's senior executive adviser, Ms Errey - an electrical engineer - had access to classified reports on Iraq's weapons programs.

"I had access to those reports. I used to read them before I'd take them in to Dr Chessell," she said.

"There wasn't enough substantiated evidence from the reports I was seeing to justify the war."

Ms Errey is the second disillusioned official to go public with doubts about the Howard Government's claim that Iraq's weapons represented a threat. Andrew Wilkie, an analyst at the Office of National Assessments, quit in opposition to the war last year.

In July last year, Britain's Blair Government was at the centre of a scandal after the suicide of Dr David Kelly, a senior defence scientist. Dr Kelly was publicly accused of leaking a story that claimed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up" to justify the war.

Ms Errey, 43, explained her views to a parliamentary committee, but her testimony was not mentioned in the committee report.

She said she was a highly regarded official within the Defence Science and Technology Organisation until her opposition to the war became known.

She worked on the Collins Class submarine project and in DSTO's international division and had access to all the reports submitted to Dr Chessell. She also had the responsibility to brief him on issues of importance, including what Senator Hill needed to know.

"Something that was going to Chessell, a letter for him, I would read and generally draft a reply before I even showed it to him," she said. "If I thought the minister needed to be aware of an issue, I'd draft the ministerial briefing."

Ms Errey said there was debate in Dr Chessell's office in the months before the war over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"His staff were the weapons inspectors, part of Hans Blix's UN team," she said. "So Chessell had a duty of care because his staff were the inspectors.

"The UN team was saying 'We haven't found any WMDs. Let us finish our job'. That was different advice to what the intelligence reports were saying.

"The Government was saying, 'Look, the Americans are right and it's time to go in'. I didn't agree."

Ms Errey received a letter from Defence on Monday that terminated her employment "on performance grounds". But she said: "The real reason is I took a stand against the war. If I hadn't taken that stand, I'm sure I would have been given leave without pay."

At the start of the war, Mr Howard said: "We are determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, its chemical and biological weapons."

A spokeswoman for Senator Hill said: "Ms Errey's case was a matter for the Defence Department and the Public Service Act."

Sunday Herald Sun


This report appears on NEWS.com.au.

[annabanana]

66. interesting

The same story was playing out in Australia as it was in the US and UK.. Principled professionals getting the boot, or walking away in the face of top level chicanery..

[sniffa]

72. k to the r

[Eric J in MN]

78. An unnamed source saying unnamed Americans

asked unnamed Iraqis to plant WMD.

Anyone else bothered by the lack of names?

[lala_rawraw]

93. Sources

and no, it is called working on the intel beat where one is frequently working with sources who cannot for reasons go on the record, not the least of which is safety

really, try to understand what it is you are talking about here

[Eric J in MN]

95. Not only is the source anonymous, but so are the people

who allegedly tried to get Iraqis to plant WMDs, and the Iraqis who refused.

We also aren't told how the source knows any of this.

[lala_rawraw]

97. k, thanks for the tip

i assume you know what you are talking about and how such things work

[serryjw]

79. Remember this article?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0413-02.htm

[Octafish]

82. Excellent info, as always! Thank you robertpaulsen!

This adds a bit, but not anywhere near what I read above...

Did Plame out WH plans for finding WMD in Iraq?

Submitted by davidswanson on Sat, 2005-11-19 17:21. Media

By Hornet, http://houseoflabor.tpmcafe.com

Did the White House plan to 'find' WMD in Iraq until Brewster-Jennings intercepted their shipment? Was that why Plame was in their crosshairs long before Wilson's editorial?

Buried in a TPM Nov 18 blog about what the WH was really thinking when it invaded Iraq, Joshua Micah Marshall writes "This even leads to a sort of inverted conspiracy theorizing when people ask, 'If he knew there was no WMD, why didn't they at least try to plant some to avoid the catastrophic embarrassment which ensued after the war....The real answer, I think, is as banal as it is devastating: I don't think they ever gave it much thought -- not in the sense of trying to get to the heart of the matter."

This WH may be diabolical, but it's not stupid. Apparently, they gave it a lot of thought if the following is true. As Wayne Madsen reports (Nov 11):

"According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network."

CONTINUED...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/4939

We're in some deep doo-doo.

Not as deep as what the BFEE's facing.

[Nothing Without Hope]

88. The Turkish connection yet again - Turkey sure turns up frequently

in neocon schemes. Thanks, Octafish! :hi:

[Me.]

96. And There's The Hastert Angle

“Vanity Fair alleges that Hastert may have been the recipient of tens of thousands of dollars of secret payments from Turkish officials in exchange for political favors and information. In the article, titled "An Inconvenient Patriot," Edmonds says that she gave confidential testimony about the payments to congressional staffers, the Inspector General and members of the 9/11 Commission. Edmonds says that she heard of the payments while listening to FBI wiretaps of Turkish officials who were under surveillance by the FBI.”

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/10/1346254

[robertpaulsen]

116. Great find, Octafish!

I think Justin Raimondo also wrote a great article linking Plame/AIPAC with Turkey. Sibel Edmonds also spoke of how all these scandals are connected.

I'll post the links when I find them.

[H2O Man]

120. I would suggest

the article on page 12 of the Jan-Feb '06 issue of Washington Report (on Middle East Affairs), by Andrew Killgore. (The former US ambassador of Qatar was among seven officials who sued the Federal Election Commission in 1989 for failing to make AIPAC publish details of their income and expenditures. The case, which went to the US Supreme Court, was sent back to the original jurisdiction in US District Court.)

Killgore, now the publisher of Washington Report, explains how the cases against AIPAC's Weissman and Rosen (scheduled to begin this month), may result in old friends like Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, and Perle being called to testify.

Also of interest is a LTTE on page 6 ("Coincidence or Not?") which documents the influence of AIPAC on the Senate. It is surely of equal -- or far greater -- significance than the current Abramoff scandal.

www.wrmea.com

[Stand and Fight]

85. It seems these guys will stop at nothing... n/t

[Clara T]

86. And The Corporate Press is Silent, That is Their Job

The aim, therefore, is to stifle the discussion and silence the adversaries, an aim that is much more ideological than you would care to think. It also explains perfectly, for example, why the whole of the press often say the same things. The rule is that the people controlling the media have to be totally reliable: they don’t even have to be told what to say. They already know it by heart. They have already internalised the rules of the game. Being reliable is something that requires lengthy training and considerable single-mindedness. On every level of the information hierarchy you have to prove that you have a total disregard for the truth, a complete readiness to deceive and an absolutely impenetrable cynicism. This, as a rule, is the only way of getting up to the next level."

[kimpossible]

91. Hah! I knew it!

I've been saying for months that something along those lines must be the real reason they went after Valerie Plame - even bigger potatoes than her husband's report.

[Clara T]

94. kick for info

[passy]

100. Where does Iran fit in all this?

Let us say someone like Chalabi is aware of the planting of WMDs and what they are planting, like nuclear triggers for example http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5077724#5081680 .
Now is it too far fetched that Chalabi told the Iranians about it and they intercepted the delivery.
That could mean that Iran could get its hands on a large number of nuclear triggers to make bombs fairly easily.
Since the operation was meant to be super top secret no one would ever mention it again.
I just had this thought remembering an article I read yesterday in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1678220,00.html .

[Rainscents]

101. OMG. This is HUGE!!!

:wow:

[flyarm]

102. i posted about this in nov ..and it went nowhere here...

i posted about this in nov but was basically shut down by mod...

Sat Nov-19-05 09:53 AM
Original message


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5404344

whislteblower is afraid..she knew of the planting of wmd in iraq!
check out the date of this piece!! i kept it in my files!!

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/06/Whistleblower.html

Real History and the Iraq War

Posted Saturday, June 28, 2003



snip:

June 20, 2003


futher proof of this is as follows ..from my files:

fly

AND MORE BACKUP..
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/08/we_53 ...

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20040420Baker.html


fly

[BamaBecky]

103. SOMEBODY SHOULD BE HUNG FOR THIS

OR FACE A FIRING SQUAD

[Clara T]

106. kick for info

[stop the bleeding]

107. read posts #39 & 42 by PP for info, very interesting....

[Al-CIAda]

109. .

[Wordie]

115. Kick (everyone should read this)

[greiner3]

117. I was wondering if they would get caught doing it or not;

It's not a question of doing, more the question of getting caught.:woohoo:

[Al-CIAda]

121. .

[robertpaulsen]

122. Birthday kick

Just thought I'd take time away from celebrating my birthday to kick this to the top. I'll be back Sunday for more discussion & research on this development.

:kick:

[Imagevision]

123. I truly am surprised they never pulled it off - planting the wmd material

it seems like Rove/Rumsfeld would have had no problem doing this. - amazing...!

[never cry wolf]

124. K & R, amazing read.........n/t

[Clara T]

125. Task Force 20

Task Force 20
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Task Force 20 is a temporary, top secret Task Force assigned to Iraq.
This task force is comprised of Army Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy's elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group. It is rumored that operators from the UK's world famous Counter-terrorism unit, the Special Air Service (SAS) and Poland's Elite CT unit, GROM also are members of TF 20.
The force is made of a 40 man assault team backed by a private aviation unit and backed by an intelligence unit. The unit is commanded by a U.S. Air Force Brigadier General.
Task Force 20's primary goal is to capture or kill "High Value Targets" (HVT's), such as Iraqi Mujahideen leaders and former Ba'ath party regime members and leaders. Task Force 20 operators were directly involved in the 14 hour firefight between them, 101st Airborne soldiers, and Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein. The two sons were killed in the shootout after TOW missiles launched from 101st Airborne Humvees killed them. The apprehension of the most wanted man in Iraq, Saddam Hussein in Operation Red Dawn directly involved Task Force 121 (which was created after TF20) operators and members of the Army 4th Infantry Division.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_20

[robertpaulsen]

132. Thanks. TF20=TF121. Look what they did.

U.S. Generals in Iraq Were Told of Abuse Early, Inquiry Finds

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 1, 2004; Page A01

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

The report, which was not released publicly and was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could "technically" be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by "making gratuitous enemies" as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.

The investigation, by retired Col. Stuart A. Herrington, also found that members of Task Force 121 -- a joint Special Operations and CIA mission searching for weapons of mass destruction and high-value targets including Saddam Hussein -- had been abusing detainees throughout Iraq and had been using a secret interrogation facility to hide their activities.

snip

"Detainees captured by TF 121 have shown injuries that caused examining medical personnel to note that 'detainee shows signs of having been beaten,' " according to the report, which later concluded: "It seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of detainees."

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23372-2004Nov30.html

[robertpaulsen]

126. Kick for Larissa on Air America now!

:kick:

http://www.airamericaradio.com/listen

Thanks to stop the bleeding for alerting me on this.

[stop the bleeding]

128. no sweat and

I should be thanking you, Larissa and many others for the work and thought on this subject.

:kick: :dem:

[Al-CIAda]

127. .

[Norquist Nemesis]

129. Not surprised by this, but where are the WMD now?

Iran, maybe?

[dogday]

130. I can't help but think that Joe Wilson was a ruse

That all along their intention was to take out Plame and associates so they could smuggle some WMD's into Iraq. It would not surprise me to find out that Cheney intended Wilson to go, so they could use that as a ruse to overshadow their true intentions.

Politics, looking at one thing while all the while something else is going on....

[Al-CIAda]

131. .

[stepnw1f]

134. Could You Imagine...?

I'm not surprised and was wondering why they didn't try.... now this.

[robertpaulsen]

135. Anyone open for discussion on Stephen Cambone?

Most people familiar with Plame/AIPACgate are aware of the shenanigans of Feith and Hadley, whose crimes have been spelled out on DU in great detail. I haven't read too much on Stephen Cambone. Here's a cursory look at the man:

More on ....Steven Cambone
by RationalMan
Tue May 11, 2004 at 07:34:36 AM PDT

Before taking over as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence in early 2003, Stephen Cambone, considered one of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's key aides, served on a number of influential government and nongovernmental defense review studies. He served on both the National Institute for Public Policy's Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control study team as well as the Project for the New American Century's 2001 "Rebuilding America's Defense" report team. Both studies seem to have served as blueprints for the defense policies initiated by the administration of George W. Bush. Cambone also served on two Rumsfeld-chaired studies commissioned by Congress dealing with space weapons and the missile threat to the United States.

When Cambone was tapped to be the first ever undersecretary of defense for intelligence, some observers saw it as a Rumsfeld power grab. According to veteran defense analyst John Prados (Tompaine.com, April 14, 2003), Rumsfeld's appointment of Cambone "will allow the Defense Department to consolidate its intelligence programs in a way that could undermine CIA head George Tenet's role."

* RationalMan's diary :: ::
*

Despite -- and perhaps because of -- his close relationship to the defense secretary, Cambone is apparently widely disliked in the Pentagon. Neoconservative writer Tom Donnelly reported in the The Weekly Standard that "fairly or not, Cambone has long been viewed as Rumsfeld's henchman, almost universally loathed -- but more important, feared -- by the services (3) And the Washington Monthly reported in late 2001, "It would be hard to exaggerate how much Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top aide Stephen Cambone were hated within the Pentagon prior to September 11. Among other mistakes, Rumsfeld and Cambone foolishly excluded top civilian and military leaders when planning an overhaul of the military to meet new threats, thereby ensuring even greater bureaucratic resistance. According to the Washington Post, an Army general joked to a Hill staffer that 'if he had one round left in his revolver, he would take out Steve Cambone.'." Cambone's reputation in the building hasn't improved much since Sept.11, but Rumsfeld's has been transformed." (4)

snip

Cambone's work on missile defense issues extends well beyond his participation on the influential Rumsfeld missile threat commission. According to the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project, "As Director of Strategic Defense Policy, Cambone was a major contributor to President Bush's decision to refocus the SDI Strategic Defense Initiative program in 1991 and developed the concept for a global protection system. He was a member of the high-level group appointed by the president to discuss the global protection system with Russia, U.S. allies, and other states. In addition, he was responsible for addressing and resolving policy issues that arose in the compliance review group (DOD Department of Defense organization to oversee compliance with the ABM antiballistic missile treaty) and the strategic systems committee of the Defense Acquisition Board, which is responsible for approving DOD weapon system acquisition." (7)

more...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/5/11/93436/3503

Anyone else got dirt on Cambone?

[robertpaulsen]

136. Anyone? Able Danger?

Support grows in Congress to allow testimony from 'Able Danger' on pre-9/11 intelligence

Larisa Alexandrovna

snip

“Able Danger” was a Defense Department program that purportedly identified Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, over a year before the attack.

snip

The program made front page news and generated controversy in August in the wake of claims made by former members of the group that they had successfully identified Atta over a year prior to the attack. The operation also identified Marwan Al-Sheehi, the man believed to be the pilot of United Flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower; Nawaf Al-Hazmi, the man believed to be one of the hijackers of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and Khalid Al-Mihdhar, believed to have been involved in hijacking the same flight.

Charts, data and documentation from the program were destroyed in 2000 and 2004. The program itself was reportedly terminated in early 2001 after Able Danger liaison Lt. Col. Shaffer briefed General Shelton at one meeting and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Admiral Wilson, General Counsel Richard L. Shiffrin and then-Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Stephen Cambone, at another. Cambone was later appointed by Douglas Feith to serve as Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Support_grows_in_Congress_to_allow_1117.html