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Tenet said OSP rewrote CIA intel to help build case for war: old news?

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buycitgo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 09:50 PM
Original message
Tenet said OSP rewrote CIA intel to help build case for war: old news?
I heard that on Harry shearer's show last night, which was EXCELLENT.

he nailed the crap out of WH lies on a number of fronts, doing so in at least as funny a manner as Al Franken or Michael Moore, and quite a bit more subtly, IMO.

http://www.harryshearer.com/leshow/index.html
start about 19 minutes in for other amazing stuff (andrew wilkie, brian jones ring a bell?), then skip to 45 for the Tenet info

then I checked, and found this.

is it me, or has this not exactly been trumpeted from the rooftops?

When George Tenet, the director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about dubious intelligence data on the Iraqi threat that made it into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, he said an ad-hoc committee called the Office of Special Plans, headed by Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other high-profile hawks rewrote the intelligence information on Iraq that the CIA gathered and gave it to White House officials to help Bush build a case for war, according to three Senators on the intelligence committee.

Tenet told the Intelligence Committee that his own spies at the CIA determined that much of the intelligence information they collected on Iraq could not prove that the country was an imminent threat nor could they find any concrete evidence that Iraq was stockpiling a cache of chemical and biological weapons. But the Office of Special Plans, using Iraqi defectors from the Iraqi National Congress as their main source, rewrote some of the CIA’s intelligence to say, undeniably, that Iraq was hiding some of the world’s most lethal weapons. Once the intelligence was rewritten, it was delivered to the office of National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, where it found its way into various public speeches given by Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bush, the Senators said.

Moreover, these Senators allege that the office of the Vice President and the National Security Council were fully aware that the intelligence Wolfowitz’s committee collected may not have been reliable. The Senators said they are discussing privately whether to ask Wolfowitz to testify before a Senate hearing in the near future to determine how large of a role his Special Plans committee played in providing the President with intelligence data on Iraq and whether that information was reliable or beefed up to help build a case for war.

A week ago, Tenet claimed responsibilty for allowing the White House to use the now disputed claim that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger to build an atomic bomb in Bush's State of the Union address. Last week, these Senators and a CIA intelligence official said the Office of Special Plans urged the White House to use the uranium claim in Bush's speech.

But Democrats in the Senate are now asking what role the secret committee set up by Wolfowitz played in hyping the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.


http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00157.htm

why aren't they playing THIS up today, in light of the amazingly bald LIES emanating from every branch of government?

did the demsens forGET about this?

and note the author, relegated to the hinterlands for his story on former Army Sec White

is it me, or shouldn't this story be pretty important?

try googling......I could find nothing else about this

any ideas?
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buycitgo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 09:52 PM
Response to Original message
1. this is from last July, BTW
did I miss this?

I'd have thought I'd remembered mention of OSP way back then

anybody else recall this?
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buycitgo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 09:59 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. who were the three senators?
and WHY aren't they making a stink about this now, in light of the horseshit being spread now, trying to justify their reliance on the intel with which they were 'stuck?'

am I missing something here?

I can't believe this didn't get a ton of pub when it came out.

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alfredo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-10-04 01:42 AM
Response to Reply #1
12. that was their charter, to massage intelligence to fit their agenda.
The people manning the OSP are not intelligence professionals, they are political hacks.
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-10-04 02:00 AM
Response to Reply #12
13. Most of them were TEMPS
There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.

"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.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,999669,00.html
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Oilwellian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 10:07 PM
Response to Original message
3. Here's Senate Intel's list of meetings last July
First Session, 2003
January February March April May June
July August September October November December

July 2003

July 9, 2003
Closed Briefing: Intelligence Matters

July 10, 2003
Closed Hearing: Intelligence Matters

July 16, 2003
Closed Hearing: Intelligence Matters

July 17, 2003
Closed Briefing: Intelligence Matters

July 23, 2003
Closed Briefing: Intelligence Matters

July 24, 2003
Closed Hearing: Intelligence Matters

July 30, 2003
Closed Briefing: Intelligence Matters

July 31, 2003
Closed Briefing: Intelligence Matters

http://intelligence.senate.gov/hr108.htm#July 2003
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 10:08 PM
Response to Original message
4. Harry Shearer from Mighty Wind?
He has a talk show? How do I listen?
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ComerPerro Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 11:03 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. harry shearer from the Simpsons?
Same guy...
But is this the case?

He has a talk show?
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maggrwaggr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 11:08 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. try this
http://www.kcrw.org

It's a great station here in LA. I'm sure you can find Harry Shearer's stuff on there somewhere.
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welshTerrier2 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 10:57 PM
Response to Original message
5. OSP, CIA, M-O-U-S-E ...
Edited on Mon Feb-09-04 10:58 PM by welshTerrier2
When George Tenet, the director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about dubious intelligence data on the Iraqi threat that made it into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, he said an ad-hoc committee called the Office of Special Plans, headed by Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other high-profile hawks rewrote the intelligence information on Iraq that the CIA gathered and gave it to White House officials to help Bush build a case for war, according to three Senators on the intelligence committee.

i wish we had this quote in Tenet's own words ... he directly contradicted this statement during a Q&A session in a speech he made a few days ago ... a student in the audience, referring to an article in Mother Jones, asked Tenet about the OSP ... Tenet joked about not reading Mother Jones and then aggressively pointed out that the President "has assured me he gets all his intelligence directly from me".

Tenet's speech and bush's MTP interview clearly were being read from the same script ... it sure looks like a deal was cut to me ...
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-10-04 12:09 AM
Response to Reply #5
10. I saw it - the student messed up & asked about Office of Special Programs
But he was a brave and smart student and I hope he is a DUer. Tenet glossed it over, did not answer question as asked.
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sventvkg Donating Member (448 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 11:17 PM
Response to Original message
8. oH yea, Where is your Boy Kerry on this? Where is the DLC outrage?
Loosers....I'm over it...2 sides of the same coin...The Democratic party is a joke.
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demgrrrll Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Feb-09-04 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Would Tenet have cut a deal for someone to go down in the Plame
affair in exchange for his support on the WMD issue?
It seems that these two issues are moving in the same
time frame. I will be surprised if Cheney isn't on the
ticket. Not shocked, but surprised.
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-10-04 12:13 AM
Response to Original message
11. I see we had stories about OSP beginning in July
Edited on Tue Feb-10-04 12:15 AM by Stephanie
but I don't have reference to Tenet's testimony. Found these in the PNAC Links Archive:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=110&topic_id=80&mesg_id=200&page=

The spies who pushed for war (OSP) - Guardian, 7/17/03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,999669,00.html

The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

<snip>In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.

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

The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.

There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.

"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. <more>



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=110&topic_id=80&mesg_id=1861&page=

THE STOVEPIPE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH | The New Yorker - 10/27/03

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

THE STOVEPIPE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.
Issue of 2003-10-27
Posted 2003-10-20

<snip>

Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence.

<snip>

The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic—and potentially just as troublesome. Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. “The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet”—the C.I.A. director—“for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.” <more>
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Eloriel Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-10-04 02:06 AM
Response to Original message
14. IIRC, Seymour Hersch covered it pretty thoroughly some months
ago. (Don't remember exactly when.) It's not been a secret.
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-10-04 02:15 AM
Response to Reply #14
15. the post is just above yours
^
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