Posted on 02/05/2004 2:10:41 PM PST by FlyLow
With a fresh introduction by Scott Pelley, CBS’s 60 Minutes II on Wednesday night re-ran its October 15 story which featured disgruntled former State Department official Greg Thielmann who denounced Colin Powell for using discredited claims in his UN presentation.
As the October 16, 2003 CyberAlert summarized: CBS hyped as “new questions tonight,” allegations it played at the top of Wednesday’s 60 Minutes II, from former State Department intelligence bureau official Greg Thielmann, that Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5 presentation to the UN Security Council contained inaccurate and unsupportable claims about Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. But CBS was playing loose with the facts in putting self-promotional marketing ahead of accuracy since CBS itself featured the same basic charge from Thielmann back on July 9 and he leveled his allegations, against Powell and other Bush officials, during PBS’s June 13 Now with Bill Moyers.
An excerpt from the CyberAlert:
Scott Pelley opened the broadcast in front of a “The Man Who Knew” graphic sign: “In the run-up to the war in Iraq, one moment seemed to be a turning point: the day Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the case for the invasion. Millions of us watched as he laid out the evidence and reached a damning conclusion -- that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. “But the man you will hear from tonight says that key evidence in that speech was misrepresented and the public was deceived. Greg Thielmann should know. He had been Powell's own chief of intelligence when it came to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.”
Pelley to Thielmann: “When you saw Secretary of State Powell make his presentation to the United Nations, what did you think?” Thielmann: “I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a more mature reaction. I think my conclusion now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation.” Pelley: “At the end of the speech, the United Nations and the American people had been misinformed, in your opinion?” Thielmann: “I think so.”
Pelley pumped up Thielmann’s credentials: “Greg Thielmann was a foreign service officer for 25 years. His last job at the State Deportment was Acting Director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Secretary Powell....Thielmann was admired at the State Department. One high-ranking official called him honorable, knowledgeable, very experienced. Thielmann took a long-planned retirement four months before Powell’s big moment at the UN.”
Noting how “Greg Thielmann says the nuclear case was filled with half-truths,” Pelley ran through how Thielmann and another inspector found no evidence that Iraq sought uranium in Africa and, on the aluminum tubes, that they were definitively not for use in any Iraqi nuclear quest.
Pelley relayed how Thielmann “says the administration took murky information out of the gray area and made it black and white.” Thielmann claimed that what Powell said were “decontamination” trucks really were fire trucks.
Pelly asked a UN inspector: “As you watched the speech unfold, what was the reaction among the inspectors?” Inspector: “Various people would laugh at various times because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything, had no meaning.”
Pelley summed up in skipping over all that David Kay did find: “An interim report by coalition inspectors says so far, there is no evidence of a uranium enrichment program, no chemical weapons, no biological weapons, and no Scud missiles. The State Department told us that Secretary Powell would not be available for an interview. But earlier this month, he said the jury on Iraq is still out.” Powell: “So I think one has to look at the whole report. Have we found a factory or a plant or a warehouse full of chemical rounds? No, not yet.” Pelley: “As for Greg Thielmann, he told us he’s a reluctant witness. He said the says the President’s address worried him because he knew the African uranium story was false and he watched Secretary Powell’s speech with disappointment because, up until then, he said, he'd seen Powell bringing what he called 'reason' to the administration’s inner circle. Today, Thielmann believes the decision to go to war was made -- and the intelligence was interpreted -- to fit that conclusion.” Thielmann: “There’s plenty of blame to go around. But the main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I've called faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. So I would assign some blame to the intelligence community, and most of the blame to the senior administration officials.”
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