Free Republic

October 3, 2004 How the White House Embraced Disputed Iraqi Arms IntelligenceBy DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD and JEFF GERTH his article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow. In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." The next month,...

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...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- John R. Bolton, nominated to be U.N. ambassador, vastly overrated the military might of Syria and Cuba and had to be talked into toning down his assessments, a former senior intelligence official told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff Friday. Robert L. Hutchings, who was responsible for coordinating American intelligence assessments in 2003, told the committee staff he felt Bolton was intent on drawing conclusions in public speeches that were "politicized" and exceeded U.S. intelligence on both countries, said a committee source, speaking on condition of anonymity. In another interview, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

On May 13, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy berated Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemning "disaster after disaster" in U.S. Iraq policy. Well before the Abu Ghraib revelations, Kennedy has sought to transform Iraqi freedom from a philosophical and strategic issue into a partisan debate, without regard either to reality or result. On April 6, Kennedy called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam." On March 5, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, took the president to task for allegedly exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq: "The evidence so far leads to...

Around 50 retired US diplomats have written to US President George Bush to complain about America's policy towards the Middle East. The letter is similar to one written by 52 former British diplomats to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. The former US diplomats complained that President Bush's approach is losing the US "credibility, prestige and friends". They criticised what they say is Washington's unabashed support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The American diplomats said they were deeply concerned by Mr Bush's endorsement last month of Mr Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. 'Great danger' They were...

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...

(CBS) The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors. “…I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,” says Thielmann. Pelley’s report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II, Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Thielmann also...

(CBS) The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors. “…I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,” says Thielmann. Pelley’s report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II, Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Thielmann also...

(CBS) The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors. “…I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,” says Thielmann. Pelley’s report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II, Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Thielmann also...

Ex-Officials Dispute Iraq Tie to al-Qaida By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON - As President Bush works to quiet a controversy over his discredited claim of Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa, another of his prewar assertions is coming under fire: the alleged link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida. AP Photo   Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring top al-Qaida operatives and suggested Iraq could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam to the group responsible for the...

The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war. "What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Greg Thielmann, who retired last September. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field." Thielmann was director of the strategic, proliferation and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His office was privy to classified intelligence gathered by...