Posted on 11/20/2005 2:39:47 PM PST by YaYa123
.... GERECHT: We actually know from inspectors that, in fact, there were large quantities of WMD that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, built. Now, what happened was that there appears to have been some change in the tactic and approach by Saddam Hussein during the 1990s.
I suggest to you, the only way you really would have been able to detect that would have been multiple sources, multiple volunteers inside of those organizations that could have verified it, and that would have been very, very difficult, and the agency didn't have that type of penetration before.
BLITZER: Melissa, you worked at what they call human intelligence. You were running these kinds of operatives throughout the Middle East. What's your take? How could it have been so bad? So wrong?
MAHLE: I agree very much with the assessment it was a lack of human reporting sources that were well-placed inside the Iraqi government. Because we had insufficient human intelligence, we could not challenge and did not challenge our assumptions.
We worked off the wrong baseline and, therefore, came to the wrong conclusions. And the reason why that happened was, in the 1990s, we got out of the spy business. We stopped recruiting intelligence agents on the ground because it was just too hard. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at transcripts.cnn.com ...
He's very precise: he avoids talking about precisely what he wants to avoid talking about :-)
Thanks for posting this. It really was a great interview. I found particularly interesting Gerecht's statements about Valerie's NOC status. It's at the end of the interview.
bttt
Thanks YaYa. I couldn't force myself to listen to the whole thing. Reading it will be much easier.
"are you sure it's CNN!"
I was going to say the same thing.
Obviously they are trying to replecate the balance at FNC... just way, way too late in the game.
How interesting, first CNN and then NBC.
On the Today Show Lauer was questioning whether the dems, who constantly condemn our President with the way he's conducting the war, never seem to offer their own plan on how they'd win it. Perhaps they're throwing us a little nugget thinking we'd be foolish enough to watch more often.
BUMP for a great post.
Who was the Eastern Liberal Democrat Representative or Congressman responsible for stripping the CIA's intellegence network?
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