Author (Suskind) stands by his claim of White House forgery (‘It’s all on the record’)

[sabra]

Source: NBC

Despite adamant denials by both the White House and the CIA, journalist Ron Suskind Wednesday stood by his allegation that the Bush administration concocted a fake letter purporting to show a link between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaida as a justification for the Iraq war. “It's all on the record,” Suskind told Meredith Vieira on TODAY.

Two former CIA officers denied that they or the spy agency faked an Iraqi intelligence document, as they are quoted as saying in Suskind’s book “The Way of the World,” published Tuesday. “I never received direction from George Tenet (CIA director at the time) or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book,” said Robert Richer, the CIA’s former deputy director of clandestine operations.

...

Confronted with the denials by Vieira on TODAY Wednesday, Suskind said: “It’s one of these instances where you’ve got a few people whose testimony could mean impeachment, ostensibly, of the President. There’s enormous pressure on both men.

“Look, I’m sympathetic to them: They’re good guys,” Suskind added. “I’ve spent a lot of time with them. Their interviews are taped.”

“Are you concerned if they don’t come forward and stand by your story, that no one’s going to buy anything in this book?” Vieira pressed.

“I’m actually not concerned, and there are a variety of reasons,” Suskind replied. “One, they talked to me length, hour after hour, about not just what occurred, but the feelings about what occurred, what day it was, all of that. All of that is on the record, in the book ... it’s all on-the-record comments.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26050915/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[nikto]

38. The Korporate Media is under tremendous pressure...

...from Bigwigs Behind-the-scenes,
TO BURY THIS STORY
DEEP DEEP DEEP DEEP.

[KansDem]

59. NPR "reported" on this story this a.m.

However, it left the listener with the impression that it's a "our word vs. his word" kind of story. It did not mention the "it's all on the record" status of Susskind's information.

[Vinca]

2. I hope Suskind made copies of the tapes and hid them. nt

[mistertrickster]

40. Yup. That's the KILLER LINE isn't it, "their interviews are taped."

He should edit them to five minutes of damning proof and post them to YouTube.

[wordpix]

53. he should hide them in a top security bank vault until they're subpoenaed, then send them to Con-

gress via armored truck

[SpiralHawk]

3. On-the-record Republicon lies. Good for America.

A dose of truth about the republicon war lies will do the nation a world of good. THE MEDIA HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO

MAKE A BIG DEAL

out of this.

[Jackpine Radical]

29. The media have a responsibility to do a lot of things.

They have abdicated their responsibilities. Long ago, back in the Carter years or before.

They weren't even all that good in the Watergate era, for the most part. Until Woodstein stumbled onto Deep Throat, there was no semblance of investigative reporting even then.

I can't really recall the last time a reporter went public with something solid on the government. Or at least anything beyond personal peccadilloes on both sides of the aisle.

[disndat]

52. Not Woodward and Bernstein

It was then owner of WaPo, Katherine Graham. Now Wapo is at least 80% pro-Bush, as other big media. Can we wonder why?

[Jackpine Radical]

57. Graham certainly authorized the investigation.

Bradlee met with her before unleashing Woodstein.

[LynnTheDem]

4. The 2 former CIA officers are on tape.

So Ron S. has nothing to worry about.

Unlike the 2 former CIA officers and the bush regime.

[katandmoon]

5. Suskind nails it in the interview where he says we've got to have people under OATH

The ball is now in Congress's court to hold hearings on this.

[The Stranger]

8. You're looking to Congress to hold hearings?!?!?!

:rofl:

[katandmoon]

10. No -- I'm not LOOKING for ANYTHING. I only said THE BALL IS IN THEIR COURT.

[defendandprotect]

6. Let's see what happens to these CIA guys now . . . !!!

Looks like there are a lot of people around who would be willing to engage in a TRUTH

process if we had one . . . kinda like IMPEACHMENT ---

This also helps Bush --- he doesn't have to go trying to find out who's ratting them

out --- there's a book to guide him.


Anyone noticed how amazingly CHIMPLIKE Bush is looking?

Really weird --

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

23. Eerie.

[Monk06]

39. Depression followed by suicide from ingesting copious quantities of epineferin

and scotch. Either that or multiple gunshots
to the head

[Judi Lynn]

7. So glad he has done this for us, and for the world. He seems very, very solid.

He's an impressive speaker, completely self-assured, while having undertaken something which can easily get him murdered.

Bless this man for doing something far, far more honorable and courageous than anything almost ALL of our media would ever attempt, from the depths of their utterly compromised and whored out imitations of journalism.

[jwirr]

24. One of the first things I thought about when I watched this on KO was

the number of suicides that have occurred in the last few years. I do not think that the *ss is "pro-life"!

[dothemath]

26. can you spell ..............

wellstone?

[AllHereTruth]

41. Please do not tarnish the death of Mr. Wellstone.

The NTSB later determined that the likely cause of the accident was the failure of both the pilot and copilot to maintain a safe minimum airspeed, leading to a stall from which they could not recover.

Michael L. Guess, the First Officer, was characterized in the NTSB report as being "below average" in proficiency.<14> Significant discrepancies were also found in pilot Richard Conry's flight logs in the course of the post-accident investigation. <15> He also had a well-known tendency to allow copilots to take over all functions of the aircraft as if they were the sole pilot during flights. After the crash, three copilots told of occasions in which they had to take control of the aircraft away from Conry. After one of those incidents, only three days before the crash, the copilot had urged Conry to retire<16>. A few months before the crash, Conry told another pilot, Timothy M. Cooney, a childhood friend, that he had difficulty piloting and landing King Airs<17>. The copilot Guess was cited by coworkers as having to be consistently reminded to keep his hand on the throttle and maintain airspeed during approaches<15>.He had been fired from both of his previous piloting jobs for incompetence.<18>

The final two radar readings detected the airplane traveling at or just below its predicted stall speed given conditions at the time of the accident<15>. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wellstone

[disndat]

51. This is astounding. You believe the NTSB report??

Please read, "American Assassination: The Strange death of Senator Paul Wellstone" by Four Arrows and Jim Feltzer. This book shows that the Welstone plane was brought down by advanced military electronic weapon that scrambled the planes electronic system. Why in the older airliners, passengers were asked to turn off cell phones on take off and landing.

[defendandprotect]

60. Thank heavens for these investigators . . .

and I think they also worked some of this magic on JFK, Jr.'s plane ---

[Kelvin Mace]

9. Suskind needs to publish the tape excerpts

This is the only way to definitively address the question. If these guys are now claiming that they said nothing of the sort, the tapes will make liars out of them.

Of course, nothing will happen, since Nancy "show me a crime" Pelosi refuses to impeach.

[Qutzupalotl]

11. On Olbermann last night, he said in response

(from memory) "That's not how it's presented in the book."

Meaning that the part of Richer's statement about "in my chain of command" is wiggle room, enough to present plausible denial.

[gordianot]

12. CIA revenge, the denial should be expected, it protects the family dog from harm.

Who in their right mind crosses BFEE for very long?

[paparush]

13. THIS is why Bush is in Asia/China this week.

You can practically hear the cricket chirping on capitol hill. A giant yawn from our so-called representatives.

[paparush]

14. self-delete dupe

[bushmeister0]

15. I'm not buying this part

"It’s one of these instances where you’ve got a few people whose testimony could mean impeachment, ostensibly, of the President. There’s enormous pressure on both men."

What pressure? They must surely know there will be no impeachment. Even if there was and chimpface was convicted, the Supremes would put him right back in office anyway.

What these guys are pooping their pants about is losing their pensions.

[Avalux]

21. Suskind said that too last night on KO.

He said one of the main reasons they're denying is because they live off the government - they're both contractors now. Someone got to them and told them if they didn't play dumb, they'd never work again.

[orleans]

22. i thought of that last night after watching ron on olbermann

and i was thinking: what the fuck is WRONG with all these people/freaks? all they ever care about is their fucking jobs. we're in a WAR--people are DYING--people have been KILLED--people have been MAIMED--and they don't come forward and tell the goddamn truth because they're worried about their pensions and their jobs? none of them have any fucking conscience--they are all MONSTERS!

[John Q. Citizen]

36. So what else is new? As Twain wrote, "You show me where a man gets his cornpone ,

I'll tell you what his 'pinion is."

Humans have a knack for rationalizing.

[Name removed]

43. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tavalon]

46. Come again?

Yes, they did install him the first time but I don't think they have any part of the impeachment process.

[pompano]

16. The Pelosi bunch.....

Impeach Bush? She'll (Pelosi) probably will send him (Bush) a letter of apology.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Suskind didn't get the memo? Impeachment was taking off the table a long time ago.

[cobalt1999]

17. This is what happens to an Administration that lies.

Any accusation when followed by a government denial (even when they are innocent), is not believed.

The administration can not be believed anymore than when Nixon said "Well, I'm not a crook."

[pompano]

18. Lies?

They don't even answer subpoenas or testify. They don't even have to lie. Noone will hold them accountable. This Congress damn sure doesn't.

[ooglymoogly]

19. Pelosi will now- have to get together with Reid and

concoct a new kabuki dance to tell us why impeachment is still off the table.

[katty]

20. good for him-so did Scottie Mac

[bemildred]

25. Non-denial denial:

“I never received direction from George Tenet (CIA director at the time) or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document"

Notice he does not say "I never fabricated a document ..."

Edit: Note that the story appears to carefully conflate the two, it says "did not fabricate", he says "was not ordered to fabricate".

[FMArouet]

27. Careful parsing re "chain of command"

Good catch. This denial is a very lawyerly one. It begs the question: what about direction outside of your CIA chain of command? Here are a few possibilities for sources of such direction: (1) Office of the Vice President (Scooter Libby or David Addington), (2) National Security Council (Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, or Elliot Abrams, or (3) Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone or Douglas Feith at the Pentagon.

My guess would be to concentrate on the OVP and the NSC. It would be unlikely that mid-level CIA officers would have been taking direction from Pentagon officials without leaving blood in the bureaucratic corridors. There is nothing new about such manipulation of the bureaucracy by the NSC, however. Back in Oliver North's day, he was constantly tasking mid-level bureaucrats throughout Washington to accomplish his Iran-Contra machinations. And the OVP under Cheney has revised the rules of the game, so the possibility that the OVP issued directives bypassing the normal chain of command is a very real one.

If I were an investigator, I would check first for links between these CIA operatives and Elliot Abrams, who is no stranger to committing felonies on direction. At the same time, Scooter Libby's possible role would be worth checking out as well. This smells like a typical Cheney disinformation operation, so his underlings would surely do their best to conceal any related orders by him.

[wordpix]

55. I caught that, too---so if he didn't get direction from Tenet or anyone in his chain of command,

who did he get direction from? Office of Special Plans, maybe?

[Iwillnevergiveup]

28. Susskind and Bugliosi

are very smart, tenacious guys. Even if nothing happens to any Bush administration crooks and liars, they will not live out happy, meaningful lives. They'll be shunned by lots of power people and won't be able to travel widely in the world. Their ultimate punishment is they'll have to live with themselves. Hopefully, that will be punishment in and of itself. Disgraced.

[bertman]

30. Iwillnevergiveup, you are kidding, right? The powerbrokers of the world will embrace them like lost

sons who have returned to the fold.

Sad to say.

And further, if McAnus is appointed by the SCOTUS, they'll be immortalized as heroes of the empire.

[Cherchez la Femme]

58. No, but

the PEOPLE will shun them, and there a lot more of us than the powerbrokers.

...not that they care too much, but at least it will be embarrassing for them


In the future, there will be a LOT more people of the "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney" ilk
all over the world -- and in the U.S. too!
And they WON'T be arrested for such 'traitorous' behavior!

Ain't it great? :woohoo:

[tavalon]

47. The silverspoon sociopath is oblivious

and the fact that he has premature senility related to too much blow and bottle will make it such that he will be pretty unaware when he starts shitting his pants. The Joker, er, Pickles is the one who will be wishing like hell she picked another person.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

31. K&R

Thanks for posting this sabra. :)

[Wapsie B]

32. Note to Ron: stay out of small aircraft and motel rooms.

[Joanne98]

33. YAY

[KamaAina]

34. I love it when Meredith tries to go into hardcore journalist mode

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

on the other hand, she is an improvement over Katie Couric :eyes:

[Preening Fop]

35. Obviously, this Imperial Empire's facade of "morale values" amounts to a Pile of Narcissistic Crap.

:nuke: Murder :nuke: :patriot: :nuke: Pillage :nuke:

[Laura PourMeADrink]

37. Who the hell cares -as usual - nothing will happen. Maybe Paris

Hilton can do a youtube about it

[Douglas Carpenter]

42. this post needs at least 100 more recommends!! EVERYONE MUST HEAR IT!!

[wordpix]

54. K&R

[TaffyMoon]

44. I'm Shocked! Shocked!

[rndmprsn]

45. K&R hey Pelosi...here's your CRIME!

now do you fucking job and protect the constitution!

[gademocrat7]

48. K &R

[HamdenRice]

49. These denials are non-denial denials anyway. Let's parse the language-->

“I never received direction from George Tenet (CIA director at the time) or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book,”

But this statement is consistent with someone in the Bush-Cheney junta going outside the chain of command -- which they routinely do -- to order the forgeries.

Non-denial denial.

[Lost4words]

50. of course its true!

[The Stranger]

56. WHY HASN'T THE PRESS ASKED TO HAVE THE LETTER RELEASED?

THAT WAY WE CAN ANALYZE IT AND SEE IF IT IS FORGED.