Posted on 04/29/2006 1:02:21 PM PDT by visitor
Robert Scheer: Top Spy’s Story on Prewar Intel Is Finally Told
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_prewar_intel_iraq_iran/
Posted on Apr. 25, 2006
By Robert Scheer
“The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.” —Tyler Drumheller, formerly CIA’s top spy in Europe
Confession time: In fall 2004, during a crucial presidential election campaign, I made the mistake of playing by corporate media rules that amount to self-censorship.
Specifically, I joined other journalists in denying the public the right to learn of a definitive investigative report by CBS’ “60 Minutes” on President Bush’s disregard for the truth concerning the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat allegedly posed to the United States by Iraq. Having received an advance copy of the devastating segment, I honored CBS’ proprietary request not to write about the news it carried until after it aired.
Only, it never aired. CBS got cold feet, probably because of Dan Rather’s troubles over an unrelated story critical of the president. The suppressed story was solidly reported and, by exposing the Bush administration’s utter disregard for the truth concerning Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, should have been made available to the public before the November election. Now, no one seems to care.
The segment finally aired this past Sunday, in a more robust form. Unfortunately, the response has been tepid; it seems the media, at least, have become jaded with all the endless examples of the president’s perfidy. But the CBS story remains very important as further evidence of the depths of the Bush administration’s deception.
Perhaps most damning is an interview, added for the broadcast version, with Tyler Drumheller, a CIA veteran of 26 years’ service who was the agency’s top spy in Europe until his retirement a year ago. According to him, before the war Hussein’s foreign minister had been “turned” and was talking secretly to U.S. intelligence. At first excited by this rare inside look at Hussein’s regime, the top dogs at the White House dropped the issue like a hot rock as soon as his information contradicted their overheated rationale for “preemptive” war. “The policy was set,” Drumheller told CBS correspondent Ed Bradley. “The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”
That’s how more than three years later, after at least two major governmental investigations into prewar intelligence on Iraq and countless journalistic post-mortems, we are only just now finding out that a highly placed double agent in Iraq was poking a huge hole in the Hussein-as-WMD-bogeyman story.
“They were enthusiastic” at first, said Drumheller, “that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.” CIA Director George Tenet reported the news that Hussein’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was working covertly for the United States to a White House meeting attended by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Their initial enthusiasm, Drumheller says, quickly turned to cold indifference when Sabri told them the opposite of what they wanted to hear.
“He told us that they had no active weapons-of-mass-destruction program,” said the ex-CIA official. “The [White House] group that was dealing with 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.’ ”
The White House refused to comment for the “60 Minutes” report, but CBS noted that Rice has said Sabri was just one source, and therefore not reliable. It was ironic, considering how heavily the Bush administration relied on the now infamous Iraqi defector “Curveball,” whose statements so informed the main administration allegations concerning Iraq’s biochemical weapons.
Drumheller was in contact with the German intelligence agency CIS, which had detained the man with the apt code name, and says he himself informed the top CIA officials that Curveball was an outright fraud.
“They certainly took information that came from single sources on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all,” Drumheller said.
No wonder this man, who risked his life gathering intelligence for our country, has become a critic of the Bush administration. He is clearly unwilling to allow what the president has described as a permanent war to destroy our democracy. True patriotism is not the blind acceptance of presidential deceit.
Imperial ambition turns truth-tellers into enemies, by default, because their goal is not the exaltation of the leader’s power. No wonder so many national security professionals, be they top generals or intelligence officials, have gone public recently to denounce how the Iraq war has been sold and fought: The Bush administration’s willful ignorance and buck-passing mock their dedicated service to the nation.
“It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure,” Drumheller said. “This was a policy failure.”
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman. Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Web site design & development by Hop Studios
the truth is, this story's been out for over a year. Do a search on here for CBS. The night they ran the show, freepers were all over it.
The drive-by media is rehashing old news to make it look new; this stuff is just about worn-out!
Progressive Journal of News and Opinion is a real collection of puke.
I stopped reading. Why waste time on lies, distortion and propaganda?
Well, you'd think that DrumHeller would have spoken to one of the investigations which found the intelligence wasn't manipulated, and was bad.
Why his first discussion of the matter would come in a CBS sixty-minutes interview also seems suspect for a "truth-teller".
On the other hand, the facts might be accurate. I imagine that if the foreign minister of Iraq professed to be a "double agent" and told us that Iraq didn't have any WMD, we'd probably figure he wasn't really on our side, unless he gave us real actionable intelligence.
So let's go full-conspiracy mode here. Let's say Bush wanted to ignore the guy, but figured he'd take ONE chance on his accuracy. So he asks the guy, "Where will Saddam be on a day in Mid-march?
In other words, maybe we used the guy for that "surgical strike" the day before the invasion. And when it was clear we didn't get Saddam, we figured the guy was blowing smoke and so we invaded.
See, nice thing about spinning tales is that they are easy to do.
Ah I see. NOT even our fraud plaged "News Media" would touch this losers story. Considering the dozens of fraudlent stories reported by the Junk Media, his must be pretty wack out there nuts for them to shoot it down. Of course the fact that 3 seperate Congressional investigations have ALL found this to be without ANY basis in truth should not stop the Tin Foil Hate crowd at Moveon.org from pushing this garbage. Just another set of lies told by another Political Bigot who cannot stand his boy lost in 2000 and 2004.
Any truth here is that there is a run up to the 06 election cycle and this is a revisionist article. The democrats are fighting the last war as usual and this is part of their looking down the barrel of the gun, IMHO.
The fact is this is an ELECTION Year again.
And Bush allowed Wilson/Plame to go unpunished for their LIES. And he allowed Kerry to get away with not signing FORM 180, which Kerry promised to do and still has not done!
And, Bush allowed Richard Clarke to get away with his LIES, so the the BUSH LIED crowd got the communist base going.
And that is what this is about. And until Bush has McCarthly arrested and Dana Paris and the lot of them, this will continue.
Notice how the enemy within operates?
They coordinate their lying attack stories beforehand with the other hate-filled left-wing anti-American dregs of the MSM in order to maximize the timing of the attack.
LMBO!!!!
Yeah, there's an honest outfit for "investigative reporting"!
HAHAHAHAhahahahaaaaa....! (This is too much!)
One suspects our enemies find it laughably easy to feed disinformation to the CIA.
If I told a CIA analyst that the word "gullible" does not appear in Webster's Dictionary, would he run to his dictionary to check?
I'm surwe thankful I'm not paying for this pig's meals....or am I?
Robert Scheer............Wouldn't bother to read...
Notice how the enemy within operates?
There is no doubt in my mind that this story was also coordinated with Democrat Party operatives.
Remember how Mary Mapes and CBS coordinated the "National Guard" story ("Rathergate") with the Democrats? And how ABC coordinated the "missing ammo" story with the Democrats soon after that, right before the election?
It's the modus operandi of the dying dinosaur, old liberal news media.
The simple reality, now 3 years old is:
What's the number of US troops killed by the Iraq military in 2004, 2005 and 2006 combined?
In fall 2004,
with Tyler Drumheller, a CIA veteran of 26 years’ service who was the agency’s top spy in Europe until his retirement a year ago.
I wonder if Mr. Drumheller was covert then or fell with in
the regulations concerning covert agents then.
I'm afraid we are, at least partially. Guess he needs publicity money to make up the difference.
There's no substance to the story. No A+B=C. If there were not any wmds in Iraq, what were the U.N. Weapons inspectors doing there for eight years? If they were there whan the inspectors were kicked out in 1998 but not there when we went in, what happened to them?
The problem with the No wmds crowd is the disposition of the wmds themselves or the reasons for the weapons inspectors.
If he really was the "top spy" in Europe until last year, then shouldn't the security papers that he signed to get his SCI clearance preclude his discussing his job? Sounds like a clear cut security violation punishable by law to me.
But then, I'm not a democrat so the rules apply to me.
When someone uses a term like "top spy", time to move on to other articles. This guy is writing tabliod stuff.
The "top spy" was George Tenet. He took what his officers in the field to be truthful, I guess. Tenet told Bush it was a "slam dunk." What step in this process did I miss?
Drumheller has the SHIFTIEST EYES I have EVER seen!!! Any can tell he's LYING his A*S off!!! Gee...how did we get such HIDEOUS people???
Like your thought pattern.
That's a great picture...doesn't show his shifty eyes.
Given the revelations of Saddam's documents that are coming to light, the question should rightly be asked "Just whose double agent was this?"
Now, if we can only find a way to get rid of those damned illegals/liberals/rinos.
I stopped reading.
The way this story is written makes is quite difficult to decipher. Besides, CBS has lost it's mind, anyway...
Scheer doesn't realize, or chooses to ignore, that there are about two tons of documents that are slowly being translated, in which Saddam discusses his nuclear programs with his advisors, and in which assistance to Bin Ladin is discussed.
The press is essentially refusing to cover it, because (they say) there is still no supposed smoking gun.
But for normal people, the room is full of smoke, these people are coughing up smoke. The mere fact that, again and again, Saddam's people are discussing contacts with Bin Ladin, discussing terror training, discussing how best to hide his nuclear lab work, the fact that we already know that Saddam and Bin Ladin's people were working together in Sudan, Saddam's people met with the 911 attackers in Malaysia, Saddam discusses a "false flag" attack on the US for which third parties would take the blame, and so on, it becomes increasingly clear that Saddam was absolutely involved in 911.
The only question is whether he was Bin Ladin's enabler, or whether he pulled Bin Ladin's trigger.
That Saddam was involved in the first World Trade Center attack is not even in question. He was.
Certain factions within CIA and State and the DNC and the press corps (prostitutes all) are deeply invested in the story that Saddam had no part in 911, no connection with Bin Ladin, but the fact is that if you're paying attention we are way past all that.
Bin Ladin and Saddam were in it together. We got one of them, and the other is hiding at the bottom of a cave wishing it was over.
No kidding, and in addition, why then was Iraqi regime change the declared policy of the US government during the Clinton administration?
Every day the old media attempts to rewrite history. Thank God & Jim Rob for Free Republic!
Which "unrelated story critical of the president" would that have been? (There have been so many.) Could it have had something to do with, say, forged documents? And if so, shouldn't the author have mentioned this?
Scheer is a definite far-left dishonest whack job, and this Tyler Drumholler sounds like more of the same. If he really did rise to a high level in the CIA then that's yet another piece of evidence (along with Valerie Pflame, Mary McCarthy, etc.) that the CIA has been infested with leftist imbeciles who cannot grasp anything too weighty for their puny little brains.......... this article is drivel.
Some of the words didn't translate (will keep trying), but here it is:
The white house ignored the given investigationsThe administration of the USA before war with Iraq in 2003 meaningly ignored the authentic given investigations about a condition of the Iraq arms as they contradicted political plans on change of a mode of Saddam Hussein. With such charges to address of the White house the former high-ranking employee of CIA supervised operations in the Europe, Tyler Dramheller has acted. In interview of broadcasting company CBS which is shown in the evening Sunday program of " 60 minutes ", it has declared, that officials American administration repeatedly and osoznanno made of the decision contrary to data and estimations which gave special services of the USA.
In particular, according to Dramhellera, Georges Tenet has informed a post of director of CIA held at that time to the president of the USA Georges Bush and vice-president Richard Chejni on the data received from Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iraq Nadzhi Sabri about absence at Bagdad of active development in sphere of the weapon of mass destruction.
As ex-employee Lengli approves, the Iraq minister was the paid agent of the American investigation. Despite of it, information Tenneta has not been taken into consideration by a management of administration, and later three days the White house has informed CIA on plans to begin war with Iraq.
On a question: " And how ours razveddannye? " The answer has followed: " Has put any more in разведданных, business in necessity of change of a mode ", - the scout approves.
According to representative CBS Кевина Тедеско, Драмхеллер has told, that this episode took place for half a year prior to the beginning of war, approximately in сетнябре 2002.
The representative of CIA has declared Floor Dzhimiljano, that Dramheller only former employee of department who " expresses the personal sights and these sights are not official opinion Central prospecting управле-¡¿n ".
Can anyone explain to us why, when some mutjob starts to threaten this nation and others, we are supposed to sit back and ignore it till he has killed 6 million Libs/RATS/Socialists? Think about it, big hits on large cities will likely kill a lot of RATS. Where do these shiitejobs keep their heads when they're not stuck up their ass?
Or, could it really be that the Lib/RATS are actually willing/hoping for these attacks to 'exterminate" a lot of minorities? Witness what the left's phoney "caring" has done for the citizens of Africa.
First, Tyler gave his illegal interview to CBS in 2004, a full year before he was fired by Porter Goss.
Second, Tyler is quite the partisan:
Total for this search: $800
|
Contributor |
Occupation |
Date |
Amount |
Recipient |
|
DRUMHELLER, TYLER S |
BUSINESSMAN |
6/9/2005 |
$500 |
Pryor, Mark |
|
DRUMHELLER, TYLER S |
5/11/2005 |
$300 |
Landrieu, Mary L |
Third, Robert Scheer is a pro-North-Korea, dyed in the wool communist who got fired from the **LA Times** for being too radical.
How about that! Keep me 'posted'? LOL!
Well, thank you!!
You're welcome (gave me an excuse not to do housework).
National Security works every time.
If that fails, there's the garden, the kids, etc., etc., etc.,
; )
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