Was Tenet Source For Downing Street Memo?

[G_j]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22110

Was Tenet Source For Downing Street Memo?

Submitted by JonathanSchwarz on Thu, 2007-05-03 14:50. Evidence

George Tenet claims in his new book that the Downing Street Memo "misquoted" Richard Dearlove. Dearlove, then-head of British intelligence, is referred to in the memo as "C":

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Sidney Blumenthal has now written something about this that—if true—is a giant bombshell: http://salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/05/03/george_tenet/index_np.html

Tenet's account of the July 20, 2002, meeting of CIA officials and British intelligence officers in Washington is misleading, according to a former high CIA official with firsthand knowledge, who described it to me as "total bullshit." That meeting was important as the basis of the subsequent briefing of Prime Minister Tony Blair that took place at Downing Street three days later, summarized in the famous so-called Downing Street memo. In the memo, Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6, is quoted: "Military action was now seen as inevitable ... Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." Even more ominously, Dearlove warned that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Tenet writes that Dearlove told him he was misquoted and that Tenet "corrected it to reflect the truth of the matter." "Tenet doesn't say what the truth of the matter is," the former CIA officer told me. "Dearlove just didn't want to be blamed." Dearlove, the former CIA official emphatically insists, claiming direct knowledge, was accurately relating what Tenet had personally told him.

..more..

[H2O Man]

1. Interesting.

The Blumenthal article is very important. While I find Tenet to be an obnoxious dunce, it is important to read how Mr. Blumenthal interprets his book.

[G_j]

2. just added a link to he Blumenthal article

yes, interesting indeed..

[noise]

3. Richard Cummings

in his article Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels:

In November of 2002, Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security advisor, asked Bruce Jackson to meet with him in the White House. They met in Hadley's office on the ground floor of the West Wing, not far from the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley had an exterior office with windows, an overt indicator of his importance within the West Wing hierarchy.

This was months before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go to the United Nations to make the administration's case for the invasion of Iraq, touting the subsequently discredited evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But according to Jackson, Hadley told him that "they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale" to justify it. Jackson, recalling the meeting, reports that Hadley said they were "still working out" a cause, too, but asked that he, Jackson, "set up something like the Committee on NATO" to come up with a rationale.

Original article was published on playboy.com

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Mr Wolfowitz is quoted at saying the reason for choosing Iraq's alleged stocks of chemical and biological weapons to justify going to war was taken for bureaucratic reasons.

It was, he says one of many reasons. The magazine quotes Mr Wolfowitz saying "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue – weapons of mass destruction – because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

LINK

It seems all the high ranking officials shared Tenet's view...fooling the public was a slam dunk case.

[G_j]

4. "fooling the public was a slam dunk case"

that's more like it

[G_j]

5. kick