Posted on 03/15/2006 9:02:25 PM PST by bnelson44
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has created a website where it will post documents captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. The website is hosted by the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center at Fort Leavenworth and will be updated continuously with new documents.
The first batch of materials, released late Wednesday, includes nine documents captured in connection with Operation Iraqi Freedom and 28 documents previously released on February 14, 2006, in conjunction with a study of those documents conducted by analysts at West Point. Sources on Capitol Hill and within the intelligence community tell The Weekly Standard that hundreds of new documents will be made available in the coming days, including 50-60 hours of audiotapes from the Iraqi regime.
ODNI officials will concentrate their early efforts on making available audiotapes and videotapes that have come from the former Iraqi regime. Twenty-five Arabic language translators will be hired to review these recordings for potentially sensitive information before they are posted. According to officials familiar with the DOCEX program, the U.S. government has in its possession more than 3,000 hours of recordings from the Iraqi regime. Among the collection: recordings of meetings between Saddam Hussein and other regime leaders; videotapes of speeches that Saddam thought would be important; audio and video of Saddam's meetings with foreign leaders; videotapes from conferences sponsored by the regime; and even videotapes of regime-sponsored brutality.
Materials made public in the first wave of the release will be those least likely to raise objections from the intelligence community and U.S. allies. Negroponte plans to include many of the documents labeled "NIV"--for No Intelligence Value--in this first group of materials.
But Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, insists that documents relevant to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 will be released in short order. "There may be many documents that relate to their WMD programs. Those should be released," says Hoekstra. "Same thing with links to terrorism."
Among that next batch may be the approximately 700 documents that served as the foundation for a fascinating study by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Analysts from the Institute for Defense Analysis reviewed thousands of documents for that two-year study of the Iraq War from the perspective of Iraqis. Declassified excerpts of their final report were published in a highly illuminating article in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. And the full report will be published as a book in the coming months.
It is hard to say what, exactly, to expect with the coming release of documents. There will be documents that lend support to those who opposed the war in Iraq and, to be sure, documents that bolster the case for those who supported the war.
Importantly, after years of questions about the threat from the Iraqi regime, we will now be able to get some answers. How close were the French and the Russians to the former Iraqi regime? What kind of information was being passed to the Iraqis on the eve of war in early 2003? What is the real story of Iraq's WMD programs? Why did Saddam's military leaders and scientists fabricate their reports on the progress of those programs? Which terrorist groups had an active presence in Baghdad? How many Palestinian Liberation Front jihadists did the Iraqi regime train each year? How effective was Saddam Hussein in deceiving UN inspectors throughout the 1990s? What did Saddam Hussein privately tell Yasser Arafat when the Palestinian leader came to Baghdad? And what were the Western targets of the "Blessed July" martyrdom operation that was being planned as U.S. troops crossed into Iraq in March 2003?
There are still outstanding process questions that must be answered, too. Who determines which documents will be released and which ones will be kept secret? And what are the criteria for blocking the release of material thought to be sensitive?
Another critical issue is authenticity. A caveat on the website reads: "The US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." Determining which documents are authentic and which are not will be an incredibly important task. This will be difficult task too, since many of the documents have no known chain of custody. There was a bustling black market for forged documents in Baghdad after the war. How will we determine which documents are real and which documents are not? Some documents listed in the HARMONY database have warnings: "DIA suspects inauthentic." Will those documents be included in the release? Will the warnings? Will we learn why the DIA suspected that the document might not be authentic? Has forensic document authentication been done on any of the documents? Which ones?
In the end, the Iraqis themselves will provide answers to many of those questions. And Iraqis will probably be central to our understanding of these documents and the history they represent. This is true not only because they understand the language of the documents, but also because they understand better than anyone the culture that produced them.
In that spirit, we will be eager to hear from the "Army of Analysts"--particularly those who read Arabic--that former intelligence officer Michael Tanji wrote about here two days ago. If John Negroponte makes good on his promise of a comprehensive document release, then millions of papers, audiotapes, and other media will be posted in the coming months. As we've seen, that's an overwhelming amount for the U.S. government, to say nothing of a magazine.
Let's get started.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
I recalled a lot of posts and threads in the early fall.
However, a couple of people said that Mr Hays was talking about this for about a year before his articles.
He is one of the main reasons this has come about. Good for him!
So did I and told her so. That is why I thought I should pass it along.
And I'm sending them the links within this link:
Great idea! I am composing e-mails now and will also include these links. Overwhelm them!!!
Many congress critters really monitor their emails from voters in their districts, states and contributors.
Mine have blocked my emails in the past, so much for Boxer and DiFi.
They've blocked your e-mails?
Outstanding!
Several years ago, I was a hostage user of AOL. If someone blocked your emails, you were notified.
After a couple of emails with no bad language nor threats, my emails to them were blocked, and I was notified.
Thanks for the ping! I sent white flag to entire e-mail list and asked them to pass it on.
This one maybe.
Thanks. I'll check it out.
I finally figured out what my computer problem was - gave it a good knock in the head and now it will download so I can take an inside peak...
hoping between now and Nov the ones of Saddam pondering how to get the WMD out of harms way - negotiations with Syria, help from???etc the truck convoy , the airlift -
I have confidence that the truth will come out - I just want to it to come out in time
I recall Hayes saying there are something like 25,000 (Don't quote me on this number) unclassified documents. So we're talking about the mother of all document dumps
For one example:
exerpts from: Who'll Let the Docs Out? Bush wants to release the Saddam files but his intelligence chief stalls. by Stephen F. Hayes From the March 20, 2006 issue 03/10/2006
"Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.
Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out." The president would reiterate this point before the meeting adjourned.
It was not the first time Bush has made clear his desire to see the Iraq documents released. ...Hoekstra asked Bush about the documents and the president said he was pressing to have them released.
Says Pence: "I left both meetings with the unambiguous impression that the president of the United States wants these documents to reach the American people."
Negroponte never got the message. Or he is choosing to ignore it. He has done nothing to expedite the exploitation of the documents. And he continues to block the growing congressional effort, led by Hoekstra, to have the documents released."
LOLLOTFLHHO (Little ole lady laying on the floor laughing her hiney off
Thank for the chuckle
Please add me to the ping list. Good work.
I believe the number is actually in the millions.
That would make it the mother of the mother of all doc dumps!
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