CIA Agent Allegedly Involved in Forged Iraq Letter Ran Previous Operation to Create Pretext for War

[kpete]

Jonathan Schwarz:
CIA Agent Allegedly Involved in Forged Iraq Letter Ran Previous Operation to Create Pretext for War

In Ron Suskind’s interview on NPR today (and also in his new book), he names CIA operative John Maguire as one of the people allegedly involved in the Iraq letter forging. This is from Suskind’s NPR appearance:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93...

NPR: Are you saying George Tenet told you, I was given this order to lie, and I fulfilled that?

SUSKIND: There are off the record sources in the book, but there are on the record sources who are right in the thick of this operation: Rob Richer, the head of the Near East Division, just a notch or two below Tenet. Richer turns to Tenet, as remembers it, and says, “Listen, Marine”—Richer’s a former Marine—”you’re not going to like this, but here goes.” Richer then takes it, he turns to John Maguire, who runs Iraq for the CIA, another senior manager. And Richer talks to Maguire, old intelligence hands, and they say, goodness gracious, all right, well, an order’s an order. And it goes down the chain.

.................

This is the description, in Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, of part of a pre-war covert CIA plan named Anabasis and run by John Maguire. It had been authorized by George Bush in February, 2002:
http://www.amazon.com/Hubris-Inside-Story-Scandal-Selli...

Who needed evidence of weapons of mass destruction? John Maguire, the deputy chief of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, and the agency officers working the Anabasis project had their own plan for starting the war, and it had nothing to do with the WMD debate. They also had a small army of Iraqi commandoes—led by a former Iraqi war hero—willing to put the plan into action…

The plan was a core element of the original Anabasis program. These were the CIA-backed commandoes who would seize control of an Iraqi case at Nukhaib, near the Saudi border. Then they would go on the radio, announce a coup was underway, call on military units within Iraq to join them, and request that other nations support their bid to topple Saddam. Saddam, the thinking went, would be compelled to send troops to regain the base. But that would require him to violate the no-fly zone. The United States and Britain would then have a reason to attack Saddam’s forces, and the war would be on. The Bush administration, Maguire later said, “was too wedded” to the WMD argument for war. “The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out.” If all went as planned, “you’d have a premise for war: we’ve been invited in.”

more at:
http://thismodernworld.com/4418

[formercia]

1. General Zinni called it:

"The Bay of Goats."

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3114chalabi.html

Remember the warnings by Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni (ret.), then Commander-in-Chief of the Central Command, who bitterly battled Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 1999 over the Senators' desire to invade Iraq with a small band of Iraqi exiles? Review General Zinni's speech to the U.S. Naval Institute in March 2000, in which he warned, "There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with $97 million worth of AK-47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely."

Sorry about the source, but this was too choice to pass up.

[librechik]

2. Now Richer (CEO at Blackwater, former CIA agent) and Maguire both backpedalling

according to the WAPOST: (link inside the Raw Story article)

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Suskind_Congress_wants_te...

I wonder what they were threatened with--they were still on board as of yesterday morning.

[formercia]

4. They are both contractors.

Just the threat of being blacklisted or having their security clearances revoked is enough to shut most people up.

Perhaps they should do like me and take up gardening.

[formercia]

3. More names and linkages:

http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine05082004.html

--snip--

Hersh then chose to cite former CIA officer Robert Baer, an avid supporting for unleashing the CIA, who heaped praise on former CIA officer Duane Clarridge for running the CT Center properly under Ronald Reagan's CIA Director, William Casey. This was in the mid-1980s, when mining foreign ports and forming death squads was permitted. But, Hersh tells us, Clarridge was eventually fired because the things he was doing were "too risky."

Hersh, however, did not choose to use the word "illegal" to describe what Clarridge did, nor did he choose to mention that Clarridge, who may be one of his anonymous sources, was indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, but pardoned by lame duck President G. H. W Bush in December 1992.

It's also important to know that Hersh, in a 20 December 2001 article for The New Yorker, reported that Duane Clarridge, along with General Wayne Downing ("who ran a Special Forces command during the Gulf War," and was a nominee to head the Office of Homeland Security), had helped Ahmad Chalabi draw up an attack plan for Iraq. Chalabi, of course, is the discredited leader of the Iraqi National Congress (and mentor to New York Times reporter Judy Miller), upon whose word the Bush Regime based many of its claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

--snip--

[leveymg]

5. When exactly did Richer give Maguire that order?

How did that forgery factor into the "16 deadly words" in Bush's SOTU speech? Has the bogus Niger Embassy yellowcake forgery always been a deception, a way to divert attention away from this REAL CIA forgery?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. that's a great question, but, from what I saw of Suskind on Olberman and

CSPAN, he didn't make that link, although he was asked about the Niger letters, which he obviously thought were forgeries.

I think he'd have mentioned the link between the two forgeries, because of its obvious importance

[Octafish]

10. It doesn't seem like they'd outsource something that important.

Great point, leveymg!



In all seriousness, this was the guy's speciality:
starting wars.

When it comes to finding a pretext for war, Cheney's no piker either.
Sneer wanted to dress up SEALS as Iranians
and shoot at 'em -- even if it meant killing some of them.

What a warmonger will do these days to get America ticked off for war is sick.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

6. Kick

and recommended

[jazzjunkysue]

7. The K and the R.

[seemslikeadream]

9. K and R