Posted on 07/25/2005 10:03:04 PM PDT by Sam Hill
Ex-CIA Accuse Bush of Manipulating Iraq Evidence
Monday, March 17, 2003
WASHINGTON — Invoking
the name of a Pentagon whistle-blower, a small group of retired, anti-war CIA officers are accusing the Bush administration of manipulating evidence against Iraq in order to push war while burying evidence that could show Iraq's compliance with U.N demands for disarmament.
The 25-member group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, composed mostly of former CIA analysts along with a few operational agents, is urging employees inside the intelligence agency to break the law and leak any information they have that could show the Bush administration is engineering the release of evidence to match its penchant for war.
VIPS member Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who gave intelligence briefings to top Reagan officials before retiring in 1990, said the administration has not made the case that Iraq has ties to Al Qaeda and is providing information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standard of proof.
"It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy," McGovern said. "That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days."
But the CIA said McGovern doesn't have any authority to speak of the quality of intelligence policy-makers are reviewing.
"He left the agency over a decade ago," spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "He's hardly in a position to comment knowledgeably on that subject."
VIPS say their appeals to CIA staff are an attempt to evoke another Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Leaking classified national defense information is illegal, and CIA officers, who take a secrecy oath when they join could lose their security clearances or jobs, and may even face prosecution...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Bump
Gracey, here's the link to the "pretent" hearing
Thanks for thinking of me!
He was a career foreign service officer who worked under administrations of both parties, but his record of campaign contributions certainly portrays someone who strongly favors liberal Democrats. Both Joe Wilson and Larry Johnson try hard to present themselves as very 'centrist' people when they try to get the MSM to portray this as "see, Bush alienated even loyal Republicans and mainstream officials" but the fact that Wilson and Johnson love the loonies at moveon.org, Common WetDreams, etc. indicates that they have not exactly been honest about their affiliations.
Today I think we got them rattled.
That's what I would assume, if he was as close to Al Gore as he portrays it in his book. His book also indicates he became opposed to what he regarded as the neocon orientation in Bush's foreign policy shortly after 9/11. He echoed this when speaking alongside Ray McGovern in his June 2003 EPIC lecture, when he said this in response to a question about the geopolitical agenda behind the Iraq war:
On the other ones, the geopolitical situation, I think there are a number of issues at play; there's a number of competing agendas. One is the remaking of the map of the Middle East for Israeli security, and my fear is that when it becomes increasingly apparent that this was all done to make Sharon's life easier and that American soldiers are dying in order to enable Sharon to impose his terms upon the Palestinians that people will wonder why it is American boys and girls are dying for Israel and that will undercut a strategic relationship and a moral obligation that we've had towards Israel for 55 years. I think it's a terribly flawed strategy.
This is essentially the same perspective McGovern expressed a few weeks ago in Britain during the Downing Street Memo flap.
Some of the foreign policy Clintonistas Wilson was associated with at Secure America also showed up with the Howard Dean campaign. (Also see http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_01-02/Dean.asp). The overlap between the various Democratic candidates' foreign policy teams is quite interesting.
Larry Johnson seems to have been wrong more than once. And yet he continues to be given credibility as an intelligence expert.
What post should I read to learn about new news? Thanks in advance.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1450548/posts
Also on this thread one of the freepers got freepmailed by Larry Johnson threatening to bring over some of his friends and take care of him.
A couple of other freepers got the original post but it was taken off the thread because it contained Johnsons email address.
Can anyone help cyncooper out with that email that was sent by Johnson???
If Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern are indicating that they have sources inside the CIA, and it appears that they are, it would be interesting to find out who those sources are.
Thanks guys (and gal). Don't get out of your Pajamas.
If there is a ping list on this, please count me in.
CC...so what do you think?
roflol! It's sort of like those "props" they all drag out when they want to make a point. Remember, the pigs for pork, the cots when they want people to think they are actually going to filibuster, etc. They are so "original". /sarcasm lol!
Mark for reading later.
We have now established that in July 2001 he was assuring the country, via the New York Times, that any threat of terrorism was exaggerated.
I have never recovered from the attack the left launched on President Bush over the August 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing--a classified document, incidentally, the contents of which were leaked in May 2002 and got the "Bush Knew" ball rolling--and it rolled again during the 9/11 Commission only to be stopped by facts and was just pushed again by Kook Supreme Cynthia McKinney--who was hailed as seer by none other than a former CIA official named Melvin Goodman).
So, It just occurred to me to check if Johnson opened his yap on the "Bush Knew" accusations due to the August 2001 PDB and of course, he had:
The Out-of-Towner While Bush vacationed, 9/11 warnings went unheard.
excerpt (the memo was declassified during the 9/11 hearings at the urging of the left):
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department's counterterrorism chief from 1989-93, explained on MSNBC this afternoon, during a break in the hearings, why the PDB—let alone the Moussaoui finding—should have compelled everyone to rush back to Washington
~snip~
I submit had there been a real warning in the PDB (there was not) and "everyone" had rushed back to Washington, none other than Larry Johnson would have led the parade calling President Bush a liar who was manipulating Intelligence to instill fear of an exaggerated terrorism threat into Americans.
He makes me absolutely ill.
Ping to my 476.
Johnson writes on op-ed in July 2001 telling us terrorism is exaggerated and we're to believe him that he would have supported this administration if they had received a warning of imminent attacks and taken steps to thwart them.
He wrote his July piece because of the steps the new Bush Administration was already taking to prevent attacks. He wouldn't have believed them if they said they had a warning, yet he feels free to attack them with "everyone should have rushed back to Washington" over a historical PDB.
He is the most vile of liars and the fact that in his email threat he claimed to be merely telling the truth is beyond a joke. What filthy scum he and his group are.
Porter Goss has his work cut out for him. Hope he has a big broom.
My gut feeling is that Fitzgerald is after Miller, based on their past history.
Last night, I had a dream. A twenty-something Barbara Eden popped out of the bottle and said, "You have one wish left. Do you want tomorrow's headline in the NYT to say, 'Wilson/Plame/Johnson convicted of sedition', or 'NYT reporter given life in prison for giving material support to terrorists'".
I asked, "Do I get a third choice?"
He wrote a similar piece just prior to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. It was in the NYTimes, and I found it via a Lexis-Nexis search. I have not had time to see if it is available elsewhere, so I excerpted it in an earlier post. I am typing one-handed at the moment and can't find the post. Our computer is needing reloading. Or something.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.