Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
In a new article on Afterdowningstreet.org former Pentagon Offical Lt. Col Karen Kwaitkowski, whose been extremely outspoken on the subject of the Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans where the Iraq War was ginnied up, makes a series of statements that perhaps many of us would enjoy taking to heart.
There is no doubt in my mind that Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, as well as Abe Shulsky should have been (or in the case of Abe Shulsky, still in the Pentagon – be) formally impeached for incompetence, neglect of and disregard for national security, and reckless malfeasance in the conduct of their duties. Impeachment and prosecution for criminal misconduct while holding public office is certainly appropriate in these cases.
Kwiatkowski retired from the military in protest of the Iraq War as hostilities initiated. While there she worked in close proximity to those within the OSP and was able to observe how they functioned up close and personally. Especially Douglas Feith.
SWANSON: Did the operations led by Doug Feith gather intelligence?
KWIATKOWSKI: When I spoke to the DoD IG over a year ago (regarding the investigation that recently produced a report pronouncing the Feith operations as inappropriate), I tried to explain to the IG that what the Feith group and the Office of Special Plans was doing was information manipulation, not the production of what we legitimately call "intelligence." Intelligence is vetted, contextualized, and conservative. What Feith's OSP wanted, needed and produced was inflammatory bits of data, cherry-picked statements, and isolated observations by often shady characters, presented as if they were vetted, contextualized and conservative intelligence. Unlike intelligence, this effort was designed not to inform decision makers, but to shape a national conversation such that decisions already made by the administration (to topple Saddam and get bases in Iraq) could be pursued without political backlash. That's what Doug Feith and his folks did for Bush and Cheney in the Pentagon.
On the issue of whether Feith's stove-piping of unvetted intellegence data was criminal.... you betcha.
Kwiatkowski: A good prosecutor could probably make the case that these guys – Feith, Shulsky, Cheney, etc, broke several other laws. Speaking to the press on issues of national security and top levels of intelligence out of school or without specific authorization from the classifying authority is illegal. For example, if I as a Lt Col in the Air Force, or any member of the military or civil service had given either the press or any Congressmen or women any information that I described as Top Secret or Secret level intelligence, as did the OSP and OSP connected political appointees in 2002 and early 2003, we would have been charged with a crime, and successfully prosecuted. In that prosecution, our intent would have come into play, and this is critical as well. Why exactly were Feith and company lying, and conspiring to mislead Congress?
As many of us know the core of what Karen is describing here are the claims that Iraq still had an agressive program to develop and deploy chemical weapons according to one lone ex-pat Iraqi codenamed "Curveball". This information was passed to the CIA and found it's way into speaches by Colin Powell and President Bush prior to the war - however, neither Powell or DCI George Tenet were never informed that Don Rumsfeld's DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) had gone to Germany to check on Curveball's credibility and found that he had none.
This is about the claims from Ibn Sheik al-libi, a Ghost Detainee who after being tortured and also supported the claims that Iraq had links to Al-Qaeda - yet again the DIA considered him a liar - but CIA and the State Dept were never informed.
Instead these claims, along with the forged Niger documents about yellow-cake uranium and alimium tubes for centerfuges (two claims that were heavily critized by the State and Energy Depts) were paraded out as absolute proof of Saddam's mendacity.
In each case Doug Feith and the DIA stand at the center of the maelstrom.
Considering the wealth of first hand information that Kwiatkowski possesses regarding exactly how this War began you would think that she'd be a very strong candidate to speak to congress on the Senate's Phase II Intelligence investigation. You'd think....
SWANSON: Did you expect to be called to testify?
KWIATKOWSKI: I was not called for the Part II Senate Intelligence Subcommittee investigation, on the politicization of the Iraq intelligence. I had been called for a few hours with the staff of the committee for the Part I investigation in 2004, and yet what I have observed and written about mostly was indeed the politicization. So I don't expect to be called ever again. The only Congressmen I hear from are those who already understand it isn't about Republicans and Democrats, but rather the Constitution and what is right and wrong.
Hmm, I guess not. Maybe that might have something to do with Sen Roberts being too busy swinging from Cheney's Dick.
Frighteningly we now see some of the same intellgence skewing efforts we saw against Iraq being directed against Iran.
SWANSON: Reps. Kucinich and Conyers have suggested they would impeach Bush if he attacks Iran. Good idea? What about impeaching first to prevent it?
KWIATKOWSKI: Great idea. Impeach early and often. That's my advice. It can be done by the House so easily, for so little. Most senior members of the administration involved in our disastrous foreign policy and our incredibly stupid approach to fighting terrorism could be easily impeached for incompetence, wrongdoing, dishonesty, failure to honor the spirit and letter of the constitution and other laws, even in my view, traitorous acts, placing the interests of foreign countries above those of the United States. Some of these impeached officials would be easily removed from office by the Senate, and we would regain our honor as a nation by publicly recognizing their misbehavior.
Please note that Kwiatkowski isn't neccesarily recommending that we Impeach George Bush, although I suspect she supports that idea. She like John Dean is merely pointing out the truism that various administration officials can be impeached and removed by Congress.
Of those still in office, the most likely current candidate to be first up on the chopping block is Albert Gonzales for most recently thumbing his nose at Congressional Subpeonas and forcing out several U.S. Attorney's for political reasons.
Gonzales is they key-stone to the Bush Administration. His advice to ignore Geneva regarding terrorist detainees was tantamount to advising his client (the President) on how to get away with War Crimes!
It's only through his office that an Independant Counsel to investigate the many high crimes and misdemeanors of George W. Bush can be established and succesfully put forth the case to the American People and the Congress. With him in place, Bush is perfectly protected. Without him - the entire ball games shifts into a new court.
Kwiatkowski is absolutely correct - we should Impeach Gonzales, then Cheney, then Bush one by one - Early, Often and hopefully soon.
As the dawn of the 110th Congress approaches, the issue of Impeachment hangs in the air for many on the left and right. In many ways it remains a trap for which Democrats are more than a little unwilling to fall into, for if they do aggressively pursue Impeachment of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney how could it be seen as anything but partisan payback for the last six years?
The way out of that trap is to make the evidence compelling and complete enough - and the case laid out in a stark enough manner - that the neccesity of impeachment to change the direction of this country, this war, and to hold the criminal misdeeds of the Administration to account will be plain for all those with their eyes open to see.
Thus I present part one in a multiple part series: The Impeachment Case Against George W. Bush - Count 1 : Intelligence Fraud. President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney did, with malice of forethought, perpetrate a fraud upon the American People and the World by deliberately suppressing the truth about Iraq's lack of WMD, and did then use those false pretenses to begin an illegal and immoral War of choice.
With the announcement today by Sen Jay Rockefeller that the Senate's Phase II Investigation of Pre-War Intelligence will finally be moving forward to completion in 2007, the evidence on this count is certain to mount - but much of the key elements in this charge have already been disclosed through mainstream sources.
Starting with the article "The War they Wanted" by Vanity Fair which does a good job of tracking down how the WMD threat was sold to us.
First, we are all well aware of the PNAC demand for President Clinton to invade Iraq from 1998. This letter shows both motive and premeditation.
Next there are Bush's own words that "if I have a chance to invade [Iraq]. If I get that much [political] capital. I'm not going to waste it".
Then there's the Niger Yellowcake story, one that was discredited and debunked at over and over again but still remained one of the Bush Administrations must fervent claims long after the War.
Vanity Fair found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy—only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. "They were just relentless," says [Col Lawrence] Wilkerson, who later prepared Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly. "You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness."
So it's not that many in the Bush Administration didn't know or suspect that the relevent documents had been forged - they we're well warned - they simply refused to believe the truth (and/or allow the truth to be heard). Or to put it another way, they preferred to perpetuate a lie and a fraud.
Many of Bush's supporters have long claimed that "the entire world thought Saddam had WMD's" - as if to say it's not so bad that we were wrong if everyone else was too. But not everyone else was wrong - both France and Germany disagreed strongly with our claims that "Saddam was an imminent threat".
France's opposition is critical because they happen to own the Uranium Mines in Nigeria. If anyone would notice 1000 tons of missing Yellowcake, it would be France. They had external corroboration that the Niger/Yellowcake story was bogus. And they weren't the only ones who thought this story was a fish-tale.
To many W.M.D. analysts in the C.I.A. and the military, the initial reports sounded ridiculous. "The idea that you could get that much yellowcake out of Niger without the French knowing, that you could have a train big enough to carry it, much less a ship, is absurd," says Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff.
"The reports made no sense on the face of it," says Ray McGovern, the former C.I.A. analyst, who challenged Rumsfeld about the war at a public event this spring. "Most of us knew the Iraqis already had yellowcake. It is a sophisticated process to change it into a very refined state and they didn't have the technology."
Germany's opposition to the invasion is also crucial as they were the country that had direct access to Curveball, who was the prime source for allegations linking Saddam to continued WMD and WMD programs. Their intelligence operatives told members of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) that he couldn't be trusted. Yet Rumsfeld didn't bother to tell this to Colin Powell before he used Curveball's erroneous info before the UN? Amazing.
Then of course there was Ibn Sheik al-Libi, the prime source of links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, who it turns out was tortured in an Egyptian Prison and where apparently gave a false confession and was considered a fabricator by - you guessed it - the DIA.
Colin Powell, who chose not to reference the Niger claims as being too questionable, never the less went before the UN in October of 2002 after viewing a video of al-Libi's confession and proceeded to put forward a false presentation. Powell was never told about the torture or the DIA doubts about al-Libi and Curveball's credibility. He was duped.
Update: George Tenet has also claimed to be unaware of Curveball's credibility problems...
"It is deeply troubling to me that there was information apparently available within CIA (search) as of late September or October of 2002 indicating that Curveball may have been a fabricator," Tenet said in a detailed seven-page rebuttal. "There is nothing more serious or galvanizing in the intelligence business than associating the word fabricator with a human source."
Powell didn't know, Tenet didn't know and Congress didn't know.
However it should be noted that the Yellowcake evidence was so weak that Tenet took personal action to have it removed the Bush's State of the Union Speech repeatedly, yet it found it's way back in supposed at the hand of Stephen Hadley.
The involvement of both Cheney and Rumseld in these events can not be discounted, as Larry Wilkerson has noted.
What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
We can see how these decisions affected the claims Powell did make to the UN such as the famous Aluminum Tubes with the special anondyne coating which the Bush Administration claimed were going to be used as centerfuges to process the yellowcake ore. That claim was debunked by both the Energy Dept and State Dept's INR and included in the classifed version of the National Intelligence Estimate provided to Congress that October, but was left out of the unclassified summary which most Congresspersons used to help determine their vote on HJ 141 - the Iraq Force Resolution.
Bush and his supporters have long claimed that Congress had the "same intelligence" information as the President. They did not. The truth of this was recently revealed when the President claimed that his own father - a former President - doesn't get the same information he does.
Colin worked closely with CIA Director George Tenet for weeks to develop his presentation, but even Tenet and the CIA had been kept in the dark.
Today on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated the false assertion that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a relationship before the 2003 invasion, despite the recent Senate Intelligence Report that found U.S. intelligence analysts strongly dispute that claim.
<>Rice tried to pin the blame on then CIA Director George Tenet, saying he said, “there were ties going on between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime going back for a decade.” But in July, Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration’s case for war despite his own agents’ doubts about the intelligence it was based on.”
Rice also tried to dismiss the Senate report as being after-the fact, stating, "Now, are we learning more now that we have access to people like Saddam Hussein's intelligence services? Of course." But as Wallace pointed out, a Defense Intelligence Agency report from Feb. 2002 -- before the U.S. invasion -- also concluded that Iraq and Al Qaeda had no relationship: "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful CB, that's chemical or biological, knowledge or assistance." Rice said she did not remember seeing that report.
So DIA knew the Al-Qaeda claim was bogus way back in February, but no one told poor Colin?
What's also interesting is that one month before Powel's presentation to the UN, in September of 2002, we had the head of CIA Operations in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, gaining access to the Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri who specifically told us they had no active WMD programs, a message which was relayed personally by Tenet to Cheney & Bush - and was ignored.
"The group that was dealing with the preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"
Powell himself was diligent in putting together his presentation, but he never considered- he might simply be wrong.
Powell later recalled that most of their time was spent "trimming the garbage" of the White House's overwrought verbiage and uncorroborated specifics from the speech. Once that was done, Wilkerson concluded long afterward, "what we were all involved in -- groupthink isn't the right word -- it was a process of putting the data to points in the speech rather than challenging the data itself." As they probed for proof of Hussein's lies, no one thought of looking for evidence that might have raised questions about their assumptions that the weapons existed.
Powell's presentation was succesful in passing UN Resolution 1441, and in helping the Congress pass HJ 141. Many have argued that voting for this resolution was a de-facto vote for war - but it is unfortunately not that simple. I some even question the Constitutionallity of the resolution itself.
Under the War Power Clause of the Constitution, the power to declare war rests solely with Congress, yet HJ 141 effectively delegated that authority to the President for the purpose of strengthing his hand diplomatically, not neccesarily allowing him to go to War on a whim. This is a point which was emphasized by Sen John Kerry when he made his decision on matter.
HJ 141 resolution required that the President show the Congress that he had "exhuasted all diplomatic means" to bring Saddam into compliance with all relevent UN Security Council resolutions before committing us to War. As it turned out - Saddam was already in compliance and any documents provided by the President to Congress to justify the invasion must have have been a fraudlent.
In December of 2002, Saddam released a Full and Complete Disclosure of the status of their weapons programs in accordance with UNR 1441 - which pointed out that these programs had been completely shutdown for over a decade, exactly as Sabri had claimed and as had been originally revealed in 1995 by an Iraqi Defector named General Hussein Kamel. (All of these claims were later completely confirmed by the Duelfer Report after the completion of "Major Combat Operations" in Iraq)
The Bush Administration ignored Saddam's declaration and called it a "more lies" based on the arguement that he "failed to explain where the Niger Uranium was"!!! Which of course, is the Uranium he never tried to buy.
Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.
This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors.
No they didn't - WE did! Clinton pulled the inspectors out in 1998 just before he started bombing them again, not Saddam. (Note: Saddam did expell the American Inspectors Only in 1997, the Non-Americans followed them out in solidarity on their own)
This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.
Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction.
For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement.
No, he didn't - see Duelfer.
He pursued chemical, biological and nuclear weapons even while inspectors were in his country.
Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons: not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities.
Actually, all of those worked!
It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.
No he didn't because he would have been overrun by the Kurds and Shia Militia, kinda like the way things are right now! He was bluffing them!
From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs.
They lied.
These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
That's because they didn't exist.
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Oh, really? How's Joe Wilson feel about that?
Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.
Or regular missles exactly like the Italians use.
Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving.
Well, someone was definitely deceiving.
Early in 2003 the second UN Resolution that the Brits had called for was blocked by Russia, China, France and Germany. All of whom were doubtful of the US claims of Iraqi WMD. (France and Germany in particular for very good reason obviously - claims that they were all bought off have been debunked.)
February of 2003 the UN inspectors had still found nothing and were growing frustrated with US WMD intelligence. "It's Garbage"
In April, with no WMD yet found, Bush decided "he can't trust Saddam", and orderd the inspectors out and the attack on Iraq to begin.
All of it, a fraud.
The DIA (and presumably Rumsfeld) clearly knew it was all a fraud all along. They had more than enough information to make the case that Saddam was innocent of these allegations. They knew the links to Al-Qaeda were bogus and that both al-Libi and Curveball were liars - but said nothing. Their conclusions were mysteriously missing from the NIE which was presented to Congress - which means the INTELLIGENCE DIDN'T "FAIL", THE DIA KNEW THE TRUTH AND KEPT IT HIDDEN.
The State Dept and Energy Dept. had dissented strongly over the aluminum tubes, and their dissent was also hidden beneath layers of false security (as well as being covered up by Steven Hadley and Karl Rove during the 2004 election). Many in the CIA doubted the yellowcake story and were ignored. Others who came forward later such a Joe Wilson who personally investigated the Niger claim at the behest of the CIA were vicously smeared. We had information voluanteered to us from fairly credible sources such as Gen. Hussein Kamel and Minister Naji Sabri- that Saddam had no WMD - a claim that was echoed by Saddam's own UN required declaration only to have it suppressed and ignored by the President while he claimed the exact opposite to the American people and the Congress.
If Bush didn't know what he was claiming were complete falsehoods - he should have known. It's HIS JOB TO KNOW. Whether he personally initiated the fraud isn't the point, he helped perpetrate it. He legitimized it. He is the one ultimately responsible. Further, if he was this mendacious (or just plain incompetent) in getting us into this War, exactly why should we have any confidence what-so-ever that he'll be able to successfully end it? The faster Bush is gone, the faster we can begin to fix what he has completely obliterated.
This isn't to say that having Saddam out of power isn't a good thing, but there is the question that if Bush had simply let the inspectors complete their jobs - and let them eventually come to the same conclusion as the Duelfer group, would Saddam's regime have tumbled out of control due to renewed unrest from the Kurds and Shia Militia who have been kept at bay since Saddam's 1991 chemical weapons attacks? If we hadn't invaded, and had simply remained on the diplomatic path we were required by law to follow might the Civil War that us trapped us have erupted on it's own and brought Saddam down?
Bush and his supporters have since claimed that we didn't go to Iraq just because of the WMD threat, that instead we went to spread Democracy and end Human Rights Abuses. Yet neither of these arguements were made in either his Oct 7th Cincinatti speech, or the 2003 State of the Union. "Human Rights" are also not included as a justification for Force under HJ 141. Yet again we have the perpetration of a fraud.
For these reason among many others Bush & Cheney should be Impeached and Removed and they along with Secretary Rumsfeld should be indicted for criminal fraud and negligence leading to the deaths of nearly 3000 Americans, and tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
The only trick now is getting the American People to understand, believe and support it - or else it'll be seen as nothing but partisan payback for 2000 and '04.
But this issue is far too important for that to happen. the case has to be made - and it has to be air tight.
Vyan
Update: Fixed some spelling and the Duelfer Report Link.
Democrats are "thinking big" on Bush oversight, according to a Capitol Hill newspaper.
"Senate Democrats’ plans to significantly beef up the chamber’s oversight of the Bush administration will go well beyond intelligence-gathering activities and President Bush’s prosecution of the Iraq War to include investigations into the Medicare program, alleged censorship of scientists, climate change and potential manipulation of energy markets, according to aides and lobbyists," John Stanton reports for Roll Call.
So we're finally going to ask what the "F" is up with Dick Cheney's secret meeting with Energy Companies just before the California Rolling Blackouts? We're finally to get that lying weasal Abu Gonzales under oath?
Hallu-fraking-lujah!
But, I wonder and worry, if this just might be too much of a good thing?
As I've noted previously the Wing-Nuts and Neo-Con/Artists are salivating like an overheated dog at the prospects of "Libruls Run Amok" in the Congress.
In her New York Post column -- "Call Her 'Nancy Shrew'?" -- also addressing Pelosi's handling of the Hoyer/Murtha contest, Orin-Eilbeck wrote: "Forget 'The Devil Wears Prada['] the hot show in Washington is 'The Shrew Adores Armani.' In just a few short days, House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has turned into a caricature of the shrill, petty woman boss."
Now the unintended consequence of the power shift in D.C. is that some Democrats will try to impose a secular-progressive agenda on the country.
First, there will be an attempt to raise taxes — Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel will lead that.
Second, new speaker, Nancy Pelosi, will encourage investigations of the Bush administration, seeking to create a scandal which would help the Democrat presidential nominee in 2008.
But that could backfire on the Democrats as most Americans do not want Mr. Bush attacked. They want to see if the Democrats can do better. They do not want to see their government ripped apart in a time of war.
I'll say again what I said before.
"Create a Scandal?" Democrats don't have to "make up a scandal" - they have a all you can eat buffet of scandals laid out right in front of them.
However -- I will with heavy heart and a lump in my throat admit one. true. fact. We shouldn't try to eat the entire buffet all in one sitting!
That's just plain gluttony.
All of these issues should be looked at, the Congress should absolutely perform oversight. The Senate still hasn't finished Phase II of the original WMD investigation. We have multiple sets of Downing Street Memos that still haven't been addressed. We got Torture. We got Illegal Surveillance. We got Katrina and it's aftermath. We're still missing that pesky Habeas Corpus thingy ("I knew I saw it on the countertop just last week...") The people who vowed to "Restore Honor and Integrity the the White House" have instead repeatedly had shoplifters, hookers, pedophiles andnot-so-closeted gay drug-addict homophobe preachers in the White House, not to mention the Watergate Hotel and the Congress.
There's serious work here that needs a-doin.
But still - O'Reilly. Actually. Said. Something. True.
(Cue the Shock and Awe Musical montage - with the obligatory FEAR Font!)
IMO if we go hog-wild like a bunch of teenages girls on spring break with way too many video cameras around we'll most likely find we just lined up in a circular firing squad.
I believe strongly that this is why Speaker Pelosi has taken Impeachment "Off the Table". What Democrats do now that they've regained power in Congress can not be seen as payback or a witchhunt. We could spend the next decade investigating all the things that BushCo have totally fracked up, and in all likelyhood we probably will.
Congressional Dems have to do their jobs, they have to do it well - and they have to do them smart - or we'll be crying in our latte's about yet another Stealth Wing-Nut President (like McCain - shiver) in '08.
We have to be in this for the long-haul, not just the quick win.
The main focus on today's confirmation hearings for Gen. Michael Hayden as Director of Central Intelligence have ostensibly been on the various and sundry NSA Scandals which have recently emerged, but Thinkprogress points out one section of his testimony which apparently cuts the Bush Admin to the quick on pre-Iraq War WMD claims.
Ever since AG Gonzales hinted during his Senate testimony that Bush may indeed have spied on domestic calls, the NSA have been an explosion waiting to go off. But Hayden's testimony today shows that the fuse has been quite a bit longer than previously foreseen.
Sen. LEVIN: Secretary of Defense for Policy, Mr. Feith, established an intelligence analysis, so within his policy office at the Defense Department. While the intelligence community was consistently dubious about links between Iraq and al Qaeda, Mr. Feith produced an alternative analysis asserting that there was a strong connection. Were you comfortable with Mr. Feith's office approach to intelligence analysis?
HAYDEN: No, sir, I wasn't. I wasn't aware of a lot of the activity going on, you know, when it was contemporaneous with running up to the war. No, sir, I wasn't comfortable.
Further commentary by Thinkprogress
What Hayden makes clear is that, despite Bush's assertion that the pre-war intelligence process "broke down," the false intelligence about Iraq's connection to al Qaeda was intentionally fabricated by political leaders, not intelligence analysts. Feith, Wolfowitz, and others in the Pentagon set up a stovepipe "to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership" to make the case for war. Hayden and other intelligence experts got steamrolled when it mattered most.
As has been repeatedly noted it was not a case where intelligence analyst had to be "intimidated" into changing their view -- people like Feith were running their own independent intelligence operation through the Defense Intelligence Agency and portions of the State Department. These people were intent to find the evidence they wanted and use each an every scrap they located - no matter how dubious it might have been - to promote the story that Iraq was an imminent threat.
This yet again shows why Sen. Pat Roberts has been delaying the Phase II portion of the WMD/intelligence investigation for over two years. It's why both the Robb-Silberman Commission and previous Senate investigations were prohibited from asking this very question -- the Administration already knows the answer.
Whether the various and sundries Special Access NSA programs currently underway are legal or not remain a hot topic. AT&T's attorney argues that they received a Special Letter from the Attorney General which legally authorized their cooperation in lieu of a Warrant. This is quite interesting since it appears the NSA refused to do exactly the same thing for QWEST when they asked for it.
Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.
The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. Attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events
This diary here points out how the NSA actually already had a more effective and much more responsible Clinton era program in place prior to 9/11, but that program was shutdown by -- General Michael Hayden.
WASHINGTON // The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work -- but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials.
The program the NSA rejected, called ThinThread, was developed to handle greater volumes of information, partly in expectation of threats surrounding the millennium celebrations. Sources say it bundled together four cutting-edge surveillance tools. ThinThread would have:
* Used more sophisticated methods of sorting through massive phone and e-mail data to identify suspect communications.
* Identified U.S. Phone numbers and other communications data and encrypted them to ensure caller privacy.
* Employed an automated auditing system to monitor how analysts handled the information, in order to prevent misuse and improve efficiency.
* Analyzed the data to identify relationships between callers and chronicle their contacts. Only when evidence of a potential threat had been developed would analysts be able to request decryption of the records.
An agency spokesman declined to discuss NSA operations.
Feel free to send any wingnut acquaintances you have this Baltimore Sun story whenever they claim - "We can't abide by the strict letter of the law and fight al Qaeda at the same time" or "Clinton did nothing to fight terrorism".
It may be very well that Hayden was "uncomfortable" with this decision just as he was with the actions of Feith et al in the pre-Iraq War run-up - but being a good little soldier, he did what he was ordered to do by his superiors (i.e. Cheney and Bush) He may be fairly candid now during his confirmation hearings, but he's also made it quite clear that he will do whatever it is that the Commander-in-Chief requires of him.
A pure "Yes, man" through and through - just like (General) Colin Powell who permanently shredded his own credibility for all time with his command performance before the UN in 2002.
Let us recall just another reason why Qwest was reluctant to participate in this program:
The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information -- known as "product" in intelligence circles, -- with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.
This naturally explains the thousands of bogus leads that the FBI was complaining about in January.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
So we have the scenario that prior to the Iraq War the Bush Administration threw out good intelligence (such as Joe Wilson's) in favor of bad intelligence, a fact that has also been confirmed by 27 Year CIA vet Ray McGovern, former Colin Powell Chief of Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, State Dept Intelligence Analyst Greg Theilman, former Pentagon Special Plans Aid Lt. Col Karen Kwaitkowski, former European CIA chief Tyler Drumheller and former CIA intelligence Officer Paul Pillar.
This is a clear and obvious pattern of behavior on their part and there no reasonable indication that it's going to end anytime soon. These issues (poor WMD intel and the avoidance of FISA) are linked by the same dangerous extralegal pathology.
In his response to the Hayden hearings so far, Christy at Firedoglake points to comments by Bruce Fein which seem to bear repeating.
The Bush Administration is doing everything it can to prevent any of the illegally collected data and information from being used in any courtroom context, because they do not want to have to face the consequences of a constitutional challenge to their failure to obtain a lawful warrant. Think about that for a moment -- Bruce Fein is no liberal, he is a very conservative Reagan Republican, having worked in the DoJ as Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration.
And he is saying, out loud, that the Bush White House is avoiding constitutional scrutiny because they know -- they KNOW -- they will be shown to be what they are. Lawbreakers.
They realize that everything they've done to skirt the law and bypass judicial scrutiny would present them with a massive fruits of the poison tree catastrophe in a court of law. If the NSA is sharing it's data with the FBI - and we know damn well they are - they can not present that evidence in court, or even acknowledge that they used illegally gathered evidence to target a specific individual without that case being tossed out of the court on it's ear.
This road only leads one direction.
They simply aren't going to take these cases to court, except for "show trials" like Moussuaoui. They're going to use the FBI to do surveillance - then if they decide on a whim that the situation is serious enough, perform a rendition followed by indefinite detention of that subject - even if they happen to be an American Citizen - to the secret military gulag of their worst nightmare for a little bit of the ole' waterboarding. Without judicial review. Without trial. Without appeal. Without oversight. Without hope.
This is not a hypothetical, there are strong indications that it's already been happening -- and if it did, the last thing that would happen would be a paper trail.
The likelihood of them doing this to the "right" person is about as strong as the possibility that we're going to finally find those mobile labs "North, South, East and West somewhat of Tikrit and Baghdad" almost three years after the fact.
They invaded the Wrong Fucking Country for Christ sake... you think they're really going to care if they capture the wrong terrorist suspects?
The sad part is that this is pretty much common knowledge at this point -- and the resulting outrage (outside of highly Democratic circles) is practically nonexistent. This is how the Wingnut Brigade fights terrorism - no holds barred and wiping their ass with the Constitution as they storm through, Jackboots akimbo.
What and who are they going to mistake for an imminent threat next?
And how many more innocent people will suffer for it while the real terrorist laugh at our continued ineptitude?
[Update: Even short of my admittedly worst case scenario of unchecked renditions of American Citizens above, there is also the very real danger of thousands of FBI Files that have been generated from this practice. Remember when the Clinton White House inadvertently gained access to a several hundred FBI files due to a Secret Service Screwup? (They had used an out of date White House Access List) Magnify that situation by the order of thousands! Filegate: dogged the Clinton's for years with allegations that they planned to use these files against their political rivals - well guess whose got the files now, and just who are their rivals? That's right kiddies - Quakers, Peace-Mongers, Greenpeace, War Protestors, Journalist, Congress, and y'know - US!)
Under the 
They simply aren't going to take these cases to court, except for "show trials" like Moussuaoui. They're going to use the FBI to do surveillance - then if they decide on a whim that the situation is serious enough, perform a rendition followed by indefinite detention of that subject - even if they happen to be