or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
August 07, 2008
Was Office Of Special Plans Behind Forged Iraq Letter?
An extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community has informed me that Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but that a number of details are wrong.The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source. Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.
My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at August 7, 2008 06:41 PMSounds more plausable, the CIA might ask too many questions whereas the Pentagon won't say a word guarundamnteeya.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 7, 2008 07:03 PMSo now it's going to be a he-said/he-said between the CIA and the OSP? Before it's through, it will be nothing but CYA.
Posted by: john in california at August 7, 2008 08:36 PMLike you i have been following this closely online and media appearances. This explanation sounds plausable and unfortunately may make impeachment less likely.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this sounds more like a conspiracy to generate a story of a conspiracy so that it can be shredded, much like the "forged" documents relating to AWOL Bush. That little fiasco basically made any further investigation of that story impossible.
I think Suskind has been played. This story is going to become so muddied that no one will be able to say for sure what happened, and thus it will be filed under "whacked out conspiracy theory."
If only the national media hadn't dismissed UFOlogists over the years, they'd see the pattern. UFO investigators have been played numerous times in exactly the same way. This is how the government discredits investigators who get too close to the truth. They throw them a nice meaty bone that the investigator can't possibly pass up, then, once they've announced they have definitive proof of whatever (UFO, White House forgery), SIKE! someone else comes along and says hold on a minute, I was the pilot of an A-10 dropping flares that night, it wasn't Tenet and the CIA it was Cheney and the Pentagon. And suddenly that story comes down with a case of leprosy so awful no reporter will touch it again.
Posted by: Mr. Conspiracy at August 8, 2008 10:02 AMGiraldi is sometimes a stand up guy but it's hard to know what people think in their heart.
The issue is that many people are coming out of the woodwork trying to rehabilitate agencies that have demonstrated to have been in the pocket of the executive, clearly serving the needs of fucking criminals and NOT serving the needs of the republic.
For my money, any of that type of behavior indicates that those agencies should be reviewed, MANY should be fired to set example, and house should be cleaned.
I really, really don't want to hear this bullshit about "a few bad apples" over at the CIA, FBI, Justice and the Pentagon. A wholesale review and re-evaluation of those agencies is in order, and people should be taken from their chummy, crony positions and sent packing so that they and theirs can live under a bridge for a while.
Zero tolerance. I usually hate that approach because of grayness inherent, but these people should be purged by the thousands to the extent that de-bathification occurred.
Next up, de-Bushification of this Republic. (But who'll listen to me? I'm no Brooks, Broder, Miller, Novak, Pollack...)
Go McCain!!!!
Posted by: Labiche at August 8, 2008 01:14 PMlooking at this from another angle: if the FBI is to be believed, and Bruce Ivins was willing to kill several Americans to get funding for anthrax research, doesn't that beg the question of what others are willing to do (alone or in conspiracy) for their much bigger pet projects?
Posted by: Whistler Blue at August 8, 2008 02:28 PMPlausible. Let's start that investigation...
Posted by: Batocchio at August 8, 2008 05:01 PM
