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 ...
I saw that, too, when I was looking specifically for any comments he made about the August 2001 PDB.
Thanks for pointing to it.
No doubt in my mind. He only sent two emails, but the IP addresses, email headers, everything checked out. It was Johnson.
Account banned? Not so interesting after all...
Johnson reminds me of Richard Clarke. They both failed to see 9/11 coming. Their response has been to blame it all on Bush. Are they capable of feeling guilty, or do they want to put all the guilt on Bush?
Sam Hill--thanks for posting this as a separate thread.
I've been saying for two years the VIPS group is behind this and everyone thought I was nuts.
Many of us have been pointing to this cast of characters for two years. Glad you agree, but you weren't alone.
I can see that--it's great!
I'm trying to read through all of these other links so I don't post duplicate info I've gathered.
Not only is Larry Johnson a scumbag, but reading between the lines of that Slate/Fred Kaplan article, I suspect that it is Larry Johnson himself who has been orchestrating a lot of the media assault against the Bush administration regarding 9/11, Iraq, WMDs, etc. Notice how Larry Johnson is the ONLY former or current security official interviewed/quoted in the article (other than when Kaplan is referring to testimony of Tenet, etc.), and Kaplan sets the whole piece up to make Johnson the ultimate expert passing judgment on the Bush administration.
It's as though Kaplan is writing the article as dictated by Larry Johnson. One has to suspect that Larry Johnson and his VIPS pals orchestrated this and many other articles in the MSM, and biased/incompetent 'journalists' like Kaplan are happy to play along. Notice how Kaplan doesn't even find any professional or ethical obligation to consider/present another view, he just writes a hit-piece according to the VIPS talking points.
Johnson is quoted in so many such articles as the AUTHORITY, without question or doubt, and all similar MSM articles promote the Johnson/VIPS line. No hint that just weeks before that infamous PDB in August 2001 it was Larry Johnson himself who was assuring the country and the world via the NY Times that the terrorism threat was greatly overstated.
It's also great that some reporters (Byron York springs to mind) are starting to put the thing in factual context.
There are so many dots the more people that can refresh the record or add factual information to fill out the picture the better. Sounds like you will help do that and that is great.
"Johnson reminds me of Richard Clarke. They both failed to see 9/11 coming"
Agreed. Perhaps they are both engaged in 'projection' as psychologists term the phenomenon: their psyches are in RAGE, filled with GUILT, over what they themselves failed to recognize or prevent, but they fight off turning that rage inward by focusing it all upon Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. Anyway, Clarke and Johnson should be filled with rage and guilt, because they were two of the most responsible counter-terrorism officials for years, and they could have turned up the heat within the Clinton administration a lot more than they (apparently) ever did.
The comments from Larry Johnson at this link below are very revealing, for it shows that a mere 3 months after 9/11 he was much more inclined to place great blame upon Bill Clinton for years of neglect of terrorism issues. Guess maybe the VIPS characters had not yet worked up their talking points to blame everything on Bush.....
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/Ldotvets/Bubba_69.html
(posted at #108 above by "JustDoItAlways")
"Johnson reminds me of Richard Clarke. They both failed to see 9/11 coming"
Agreed. Perhaps they are both engaged in 'projection' as psychologists term the phenomenon: their psyches are in RAGE, filled with GUILT, over what they themselves failed to recognize or prevent, but they fight off turning that rage inward by focusing it all upon Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. Anyway, Clarke and Johnson should be filled with rage and guilt, because they were two of the most responsible counter-terrorism officials for years, and they could have turned up the heat within the Clinton administration a lot more than they (apparently) ever did.
The comments from Larry Johnson at this link below are very revealing, for it shows that a mere 3 months after 9/11 he was much more inclined to place great blame upon Bill Clinton for years of neglect of terrorism issues. Guess maybe the VIPS characters had not yet worked up their talking points to blame everything on Bush.....
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/Ldotvets/Bubba_69.html
(posted at #108 above by "JustDoItAlways")
Well, it's not unknown for a journalist to look for a source that will give them the story the journalist wants.
Here's a site that should be combed through:
http://www.oldright.com/modules.php?name=News&new_topic=14
From a post on that page titled "Proof Bush Fixed The Facts by Ray McGovern":
"For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq."
"Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well—the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran."
If McGovern has the "proof" that the Bush Administration fixed the facts, why is he calling for other CIA agents to help him out?
I agree---that's quite a find.
Useful summary of reasons to think Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame/Wilson did much to undermine and expose any cover she may have had well before July 2003:
http://polisat.com/DailyPoliticalSatire-Commentary/du20y05m07d26-01.htm
Useful timeline, though it does suffer from accepting Wilson/MSM spin at face value:
http://www.factcheck.org/printerfriendly337.html
This thread is back up:
Is Ex-CIA Agent Larry C. Johnson Threatening A Freeper?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1450846/posts?page=10
"In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran."
This is a year and a half after the call they put out--that the AP reported on at the top of the thread.
They just can't stop asking people to commit treason, can they?
I guess who ever outed Plame (not that she could be outed) didn't have "a higher calling."
In this article:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/17/1543215
They're talking about the call they put out for whistleblowers to come forward, but what really struck me was this paragraph at the end by MacMichael:
" I think one thing that has to be added about David Kaye, who is identified as a former member of UNSCOM, that is the United Nations weapons inspection team, prior to the 1998 bombing and the departure of the weapons inspectors and prior to their reinitiation under UN resolution 1441, David Kaye in fact, and this is not revealing the identity of an intelligence officer was in fact a CIA officer at that time."
I don't know that this was a known fact, that David Kay was CIA before the war--it's not listed in any bios that I can find. Obviously he worked under cover of one of those companies, which compromises those companies. I can't find any evidence that Kay's employment was revealed before MacMichael's comments. Maybe someone else can.
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