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Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery
John Byrne
Raw Story
Saturday, Aug 9, 2008
In damning transcript, ex-CIA official says Cheney likely ordered letter linking Hussein to 9/11 attacks
A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.
The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.
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On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer’s behalf. In it, Richer declared, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.”
The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer’s own remarks in the transcript.
“Now this is from the Vice President’s Office is how you remembered it–not from the president?” Suskind asked.
“No, no, no,” Richer replied, according to the transcript. “What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, ‘we got this from’–basically, from what George said was ‘downtown.’”
“Which is the White House?” Suskind asked.
“Yes,” Richer said. “But he did not–in my memory–never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now–he may have hinted–just by the way he said it, it would have–cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.”
“But he didn’t say that specifically,” Richer added. “I would naturally–I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.”
“But there wasn’t anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president,” Suskind continued.
“Nope,” Richer said.
“It just had the White House stationery.”
“Exactly right.”
Later, Richer added, “You know, if you’ve ever seen the vice president’s stationery, it’s on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP (Office of the Vice President). I don’t remember that, so I don’t want to mislead you.”
Suskind says decision to post transcript unusual
Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, “This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way.” It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein.
Suskind’s new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document “proving” that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam’s intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein.
The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a “shipment” from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium — based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain.
The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush’s efforts to take the US to war.
The Sunday Telegraph cited the main source for its story on Iraq’s 9/11 involvement as Ayad Allawi, a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam and was appointed a government position after the US occupation.
Nothing in the story explains how an Iraqi politician was privy to the fake memo, but the New York Times column alluded to Allawi and described him as “an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies.”
“To characterize it right,” Richer also declares in the transcript, “I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on–it was to–and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: ‘Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.’ To be honest with you, I don’t want to make it sound–I for sure don’t want to portray this as George jumping: ‘Okay, this has gotta happen.’ As I remember it–and, again, it’s still vague, so I’ll be very straight with you on this–is it wasn’t that important. It was: ‘This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. ‘Rob,’ you know, ‘do something with this.’ I think it was more like that than: ‘Get this done.’”
Magazine asserts Feith created bogus document
Today, The American Conservative also published a report saying that the forgery was actually produced by then-Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans, citing an unnamed intelligence source. The source reportedly added that Suskind’s overall claim “is correct.”
“My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment,” the magazine wrote. “Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.”
More of Suskind’s transcripts are available here.
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August 9th, 2008 at 6:07 am
There are missing lines in the article…my server? Your editing…someone’s editing?
1.
Suskind says decision to post transcript unusual ?????????????
Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, “This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way.” It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein.
2.Magazine asserts Feith created bogus document ?????????????
Today, The American Conservative also published a report saying that the forgery was actually produced by then-Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans, citing an unnamed intelligence source. The source reportedly added that Suskind’s overall claim “is correct.”
August 9th, 2008 at 10:32 am
CHEYNEY……….. .again!
this man could well be the anti christ.
someone has got to take this monster out……NOW
our survival as a decent race depends on this being done.
One man must sacrifice for the masses.
Cheyney is a terrorist!
How can this continue.
August 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Feith is a lunatic. It should come as no surprise that he would eventually be found doing something like this to get the US to war.
August 9th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Well, it could also be noted that the invasion of Iraq also led to Hussein’s hanging. How is it, the net is alleged to be unreliable as a source of information, but the PRESS, and Govenment agencys are allowed to lie, and forge, and no one here hangs for it ?
August 10th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
To recognize the Antichrist we need pay close attention to what and where it is documented in the Bible. The epistles of John are the only place the word is found, Then it only refers to a spirit not a man. If John Hagee, George Bush, and now John McCain show signs of that persuasian. So be it. If it walks like a duck. You know the story.
August 10th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
This story and the NPR report with Mr Suskind that aired yesterday was a bombshell of damning proof and evidence of cold blooded mass murder, criminal treason, outright criminal war crime conspiracy, criminal fraud, criminal conspiracy to commit mass murder, criminal abuse of power, tampering with an open FBI criminal investigation, criminal FBI corruption, criminal obstruction of justice, criminal leaking of false news propaganda by unconstitutional military-industrial intelligence mafiosi/criminal standing army disinformation agencies, and criminal treason and conspiracy in the 9/11 plot by criminal traitors at the highest levels of the US Executive branch.
There is simply no way that Cheney could have even known of any character named Mohammed Atta on that day, unless he had foreknowledge of the myth he was shepherding, before the day of the attack!
August 11th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Incidentally Ron Moss, understanding what St John the Divine’s revelations have been warning the world about, should mankind ever allow their own Godly Love of one another with false, elite, noble, hate-group corporate-nationalist fascist cults of dogmatic religiosity, in wanton and deliberate defiance of the (all the traditional Sun God Savior type) redeemers, who have always strongly ordered their true followers to hold love highest, without exception, firstly and fore-mostly above all other biases or dislikes as the most intrinsic moral part of their acts and deeds.
The key to understanding that all organized corporate fascist Christianism IS the anti-Christ is found in understanding the “abomination of desolation” statement of criteria.
In ancient selfish wasteful and hateful Judaism, in spite of the improved yet still hateful and picayune ten commandments Moses stole from the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Ch 125) pious Jews where made to waste farm animals as blood sacrifice to a heathen hateful God-thuingy in a sacred and cleansed official temple for a fee to the fascist proselytizers (clergy nobles) in theocratic political power.
Christ instructed us that wherever two or more of you gathered in the selfless sacrament and offering of love and consideration in his name, one is in the Temple of All Love Itself wherever that take place! Thus for a true Christian there is no clergy nor cathedral for even so when one gives change to a beggar in and of any part or place of God’s presence and making, just as so he be himself, in thankful blessing for the honor of himself being gifted with the privilege of generous capability to do so, a Christian has worshipped and sacrificed perfectly!
In old archaic Jewish adaptation of the Pharaohs national-socialist religionism, whenever an invader or emergency closed the theocratic-socialist worship hall (Temple was closed) the Jews where left to regard themselves as cursed with this so-called “abomination of desolation”. It meant that they were separated and thus desolate from the noble fascist corporate Temple headquarters and thus unable to serve their God thingy through alms taxation and bloody wasteful ’sacrifices’ to demonstrate their false piety to the God thingy owned by their noble, elite theocratic corporate national-socialist masters.
Whenever anyone tells you that God is not in this computer screen, in that keyboard, in you, lovingly attracting and holding your butt on that chair, in and being the universal, attractive, loving. dimensional gravitational causality of the assembly of every and all things everywhere both alive and inanimate, and is something other than the Unity of All Love Itself, they are preaching to you the “abomination of desolation”!
They are trying to tell you that God is a Hell owing hate-thingy “over there” that only they have possession of, ‘truth’ about, community with, and that only they can commune with, speak for, and give you an opportunity to worship and hate all others as they desire – for their price…
St John the Divine said that the AntiChrist was already in the world and by that he specifically meant organized fascist hate-religionisms posing as faith!
Indeed the most ironic thing is that when we look at theocratic religionism and politics throughout the fullest expanse of human history, other than Buddist nations, and the neo-con Anglican/RC Episcopal Corporate-Christian Protestant Coalition’s conservative populist political defeat of the original totally secular former Constitution of American Republican Liberty (exactly as Hitler did in the Weimar Republic) it is only in Conservative Marxist-Corporate Fascist Imperialism where people are forced to live, function and behave in love to one another as true Christians, without noble theocrats or temples, to anything other than ever present personal sacrifice to the common good of all their neighbors!