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07/17/2003 Archived Entry: "Good God."
Good God.
The White House has made a cottage industry of blaming the FBI and CIA for faulty intelligence. Julian Borger reports in The Guardian that in fact, they weren't even consulting them half the time. Loons like Scooter Libby and Newt Gingrich - and Dick Cheney - were running the show. Absolutely unbelievable.
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior members of the administration created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. The agency, known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the state department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.....
The president's most trusted adviser, Mr 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. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.
Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.
An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said: "There's nothing at all unusual about people both in and out of government coming here to engage in a dialogue and to exchange views on a range of subjects."
In that guise he visited Langley three times in the run-up to war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.
Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon, and in particular, of the OSP....
"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.
As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".
"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."
In fact, the OSP's activities were a complete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.
And they think they have problems now. If this hits the mainstream media in this country, their problems may only be beginning.
Replies: 6 people speak up
Holy shit... that's just FRIGHTENING. Like somethign out of a bad conspiracy theory movie. But to have it really happening... Jeebus.
Posted by Jason @ 07/17/2003 10:32 AM NY
I don't know why they are trying so hard. The CIA is pretty much filled with Repuke stooges anyway. MI5 in this country tried to overthrow a left wing government. Did they succeed (cough, cough - Margaret Thatcher) - I couldn't possible comment. One of them even got so coky as to write a book about it!
More recently, another MI5er in her memoirs wrote about how they broke the Miners Strike. Hardly the principled stand of a non-partisan intelligence service. I won't go into detail about how they destroyed countless left wing parties, while allowing the fascists to gain a foothold. I would start on the CIA, but you already know about the death squads in Central and South America against leftwingers.
Posted by Larry Lurex @ 07/17/2003 10:51 AM NY
So... let me get this straight.
Us taxpayers have been paying Snoot Gingrinch?
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.
Unpaid???? Mmmmmmmmmm'kay...
Posted by (: Tom :) @ 07/17/2003 11:10 AM NY
I have an idea. This administration just demonstrated how easy it was to form shadow government agencies when the official agencies don't fully support and follow all of your policies. How about if the opposition party(democrats)just set up a shadow government for this administration and all the cabinet heads, from the president right on down. I say it is worth a try!
Posted by sigh.. @ 07/17/2003 12:52 PM NY
The level of arrogance, mixed with incompetence, that this administration offers up, is mind boggling. America could be in trouble. Good people have been duped. Innocent peoples' lives have been destroyed.
For what?
In the name of Freedom, Justice, and of course, One Holy Lifestyle under God…….
Posted by Aristophanes @ 07/17/2003 01:25 PM NY
Ah, how this reminds me of my misspent youth. It was the Summer of '72, I was just a lad of 17, and G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and all those frolicsome Plumbers were blithely trampling on the Constitution.
I remember a younger Helen Thomas giving hell to Ron Ziegler and Richard Nixon, so unlike today's spineless wonders.
Here's a fun factoid for all you boys and girls out there in Blog Land: Which two presidents always sported an American flag in their lapels? That's right, Nixon and G.W. Bush! Good for you, here's a nice shiney dime.
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 07/17/2003 03:52 PM NY
