• A month before Clinton left office, his administration was praised by to former Reagan counterterrorism officials. "Overall I give them very high marks," said Robert Oakley, who served as ambassador for counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department. "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger." Paul Bremer, former civilian administrator chosen by the Bush administration said, "(Clinton) correctly focused on Bin Laden."

• Barton Gellman of the Washington Post said of Clinton, "by any measure available, (he) left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him. (His was the) first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort."

• Clinton responded to the 1993 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center by capturing, trying, convicting, and imprisoning those responsible for the attack - specifically Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah. Ask any of those three yourself - but you'll have to write to them in prison.

• Clinton did not blame the Bush I or Reagan administrations after this first attack, even though it happened only 38 days after he took office.

• When Clinton wasn't responding to the attacks, he was stopping them. He stopped:
     • the Al Qaeda millennium hijacking and bombing plots.
     • the planned attack to kill the Pope.
     • the planned attack to blow up 11 U.S. jetliners simultaneously.
     • the planned attack to blow up UN Headquarters.
     • the planned attack to blow up the FBI building.
     • the planned attack to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
     • the planned attack to blow up Logan airport in Boston.
     • the planned attack to blow up Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in NY.
     • the planned attack to blow up the George Washington Bridge.
     • the planned attack to blow up the US Embassy in Albania

• Clinton's administration organized a series of terror-strike simulations to see how local, state, and Federal officials should coordinate and respond to terrorist strikes.

• Clinton created a top-level national security post to coordinate all federal counter-terrorism activity.

• Clinton tripled the counterterrorism budget for the FBI

• He doubled counterterrorism funding overall

• He asked for 1.46 billion to ensure protection from attack on US security computers

• In 1999 his health department created a national stockpile of medicines and vaccines, including 40 million doses of smallpox to respond to a possible bio attack.

• In 1995, congressional Republicans rejected Clinton's proposed expansion of the intelligence agencies' wiretap authority in order to combat terrorism.

• Clinton's asked for more antiterrorism funding in 1996 and faced road blocks from Republicans in the House and Senate, including mockery of his plans by Orrin Hatch.

• John Ashcroft praised Janet Reno upon replacing her as "perhaps the strongest advocate for counterterrorism spending."  Under Janet Reno, the counterterrorism budget increased 13.6% in the fiscal year 1999, 7.1% in 2000 and 22.7% in 2001.

Enter Bush...
In stark contrast to Clinton, the Bush administration Terrorism record is as follows:

• As Clinton left office at the end of his term, his national security advisor Sandy Berger warned Condi Rice that she would be spending more time on on terrorism - Bin Laden's brand of it - than she had ever imagined, according to both Rice and Berger after leaving the meeting, as documented by the NY Times.

• On February 15th, 2001, a commission led by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman issued it's final report on national security. The report warned that "mass-casualty terrorism directed against the US homeland was of serious and growing concern," and that America was not prepared for such an attack.

• Heart-Rudman recommended, and Congress drafted a bill for a National Homeland Security Agency. No such agency was created, and the senate hearings to review their report was blocked.

• On May 8th, 2001 Bush announced an anti-terrorist task force headed by Dick Cheney, which Bush would periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to be kept abreast of it's progress. Bush never chaired such a meeting, because Cheney's task force never actually met.

• Former US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer said in a speech during February of 2001, that the Bush administration was paying no attention to terrorism. He went on to say, "What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be
organized to deal with this.'"

• Upon entering office, John Ashcroft, "identified more than a dozen other objectives for greater emphasis within the Justice Department before the attacks," including violent crime, drugs, and prostitution.

• In early April, 2001 a senior State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden." Similarly, the AP reported in 2002 that the Bush Administration's "national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions."

• On April 30, 2001 Richard Clark presented a plan he had been working on per Clinton to get troops on the ground to hunt down Bin Laden to Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby, the State Department's Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and John McLaughlin from the CIA. This spawned more meetings, however the administration still took no action after a fourth meeting.

• On June 10, 2001 Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams sent a memo to Washington regarding concerns over a group of Middle Eastern students at an Arizona flight school. You can view the actual memo here. Williams' memo was ignored .

• An intelligence summary given to Condoleeza Rice on June 28 stated "it is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks."

• On July 5, a month and a day before President Bush's now-infamous briefing on possible al Qaeda hijacking, Richard Clarke warned that "something spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."

• Around this time, Ashcroft's department terminated a program called "Catcher's Mitt," which was formed to monitor Al Qaeda suspects within the United States.

• Richard Clarke was unable to finally get his agenda for Afghanistan to the President until September 4th, due in part to Bush being on Vacation. On August 3, after signing off on a plan to cut funding for programs guarding against unsecured nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union, Bush headed to Crawford Texas for the longest vacation of a sitting President in 32 years. In fact, Bush spent 42% of his first 7 months either at Camp David, in Kennebunkport, or his ranch in Crawford.

• On August 6, George Tenet delivered a PDB to Bush entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."  Bush was busy playing golf. Some of the actual PDB can be seen here.
While this is the memo most people are now familiar with, it's important to note Bush received memos from April to July with the following titles:
     -- "Bin Laden planning multiple operations."
     -- "Bin Laden public profile may presage attack."
     -- "Bin Laden network's plans advancing."
     -- "Bin Laden threats are real."
     -- "Bin Laden planning high profile attacks."

• Later that month, the INS arrested Zacharias Moussaoui, a flight student who seemed to have little interest in learning how to take off or land a plane. The arresting agent wrote that he seemed like "the kind of person who could fly something into the World Trade Center."

• When Bush was asked why he didn't respond to these specific incidents and briefings, he answered, "I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him but I didn't feel that sense of urgency."

• That was not the only rejection of more funding for counterterrorism. On September 9th, 2001 the Senate Armed Services Committee asked for $600 million to be diverted from ballistic missile defense, but Don Rumsfeld said he would recommend a veto.

• In late August, while Bush was giving a tour of his Texas ranch and answering questions about his dogs, acting FBI director Tom Pickard saw reports of mounting terror threats, and request $58 million from John Ashcroft to hire new agents, translators, and intelligence analysts. On September 10th, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft turned him down flat.

• On the morning of Sept 11th, Condi Rice was scheduled to give a speech regarding the Bush Administration's plan for national security. Her written speech uttered not one word about terrorism.

• The AP reported "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months." Additionally, "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001" but the White House "failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators" and the armed Predator never got off the ground before 9/11.

• While the Saudi Government's connections to 9/11 were still being investigated, Bush invited Saudi Prince Abdullah to his Crawford mansion in April of 2002, saying the Saudi government is an "important friend" to the United States. His comments came two years after the New Yorker reported the royal family "refused to permit United States investigators to interrogate one of bin Laden's key financial aides, Sidi Tayyib" a man who "probably knows as much as anyone else about bin Laden's intricate financial empire."

• Months after 9/11, Vice President Cheney went on Fox News to announce the Administration's full opposition to an independent 9/11 commission. As CBS News noted, the White House "opposed a commission" from the start, claiming "it would tie up officials waging the war on terror - and endanger U.S. secrets." Bush also fought initially against the creation of such a commission.

• As congressional committees prepared to release a bipartisan report on the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration swiftly moved to classify a section of the report which dealt with the Saudi ties to the attack. According to AP, that section "examined interactions between Saudi businessmen and the royal family that may have intentionally or unwittingly aided al Qaeda or the suicide hijackers."

• In 2003, evidence emerged tying the Saudi Royal family to the hijackers themselves. The LA Times reported that "the 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts." One U.S. official who read the classified section said it describes "very direct, very specific links" between Saudi officials, two of the San Diego-based hijackers and other potential co-conspirators "that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental." Said another official: "It's really damning. What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9/11, but the [Saudi] government" as well. Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that thousands of dollars in charitable gifts from Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, "ended up in the hands of two of the September 11 hijackers."

• Initially the Bush Administration opposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security to better coordinate efforts to protect America. Now, even after the White House was forced to support the proposal, it has continued to drastically underfund basic homeland security, with many experts saying the department's budget is at least $14 billion short of what it needs.

• The San Antonio Express-News noted critics point out that the White House "has skirted port security in budget requests, including a plea by the Coast Guard for $1 billion this year to secure ports on American coasts."

• Despite President Bush's rhetorical support for non-proliferation efforts, the Center for Defense Information reports the Administration has requested a $41.6 million (9.3%) decrease in funding for the Pentagon's Cooperative Threat Reduction program – the government's chief program to secure loose nuclear material that could be obtained by terrorists. The Administration also proposes in 2005 to cut $21 million (8%) out of Energy Department programs aimed at securing nuclear material in Russia.

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They Knew!!

Top Evidence Showing the Bushies Knew Iraq Was Not a Threat

As we examine reasons why the United States invaded a sovereign nation, which posed little threat to the U.S. and it's neighbors, it's important that we look back on some of the evidence that has since been uncovered which would demonstrate the Bush administration was fixated on Iraq, right from the start.

From Alternet.org: In July 2003, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the Iraq mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees (called the Office of Special Plans) to circumvent well-established intelligence channels. And Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges.

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House “misrepresented” classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions.

Here is one of the most comprehensive, semi-chronilogical list of events leading up to and occurring after the Iraq invasion.

—[October 1997] The IAEA reported there was no evidence of a nuclear threat.
A 1997 report by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the agency whose purpose is to prevent nuclear proliferation—stated there was no indication Iraq ever achieved nuclear capability or had any physical capacity for producing weapons-grade nuclear material in the near future.

—[Early 2001] State Department's INR Bureau and John Bolton Clash of Iraq Intelligence
Shortly after Bush is inaugurated into office, Greg Thielmann, an analyst for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), is appointed to serve as the intelligence liaison to John Bolton. But Thielmann's intelligence briefings do not support Bolton's assumptions about Iraq, and Thielmann is soon barred from attending the meetings. According to Thielmann: “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear. I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The undersecretary doesn't need you to attend this meeting anymore. The undersecretary wants to keep this in the family.’

—[February, 2001] The Bush Administration received CIA warnings that there was no evidence of a nuclear threat.
In February 2001, the CIA delivered a report to the White House that said: “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs." The report was so definitive that Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a subsequent press conference, Saddam Hussein “has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.” He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." See for yourself by watching this video.

—[September 11, 2001] They wanted to attack Iraq from the start.
There is no doubt even though there was no proof of Iraq’s complicity, the White House was focused on Iraq within hours of the 9/11 attacks. As CBS News reported, “barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.” Former Bush counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke recounted vividly how, just after the attack, President Bush pressured him to find an Iraqi connection. In many ways, this was no surprise—as former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and another administration official confirmed, the White House was actually looking for a way to invade Iraq well before the terrorist attacks.

But such an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country required a public rationale. And so the Bush administration struck fear into the hearts of Americans about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD, starting with nuclear arms. In his first major address on the “Iraqi threat” in October 2002, President Bush invoked fiery images of mushroom clouds and mayhem, saying, “Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”

—[September 16, 2001] Dick Cheney Claims Iraq is contained.
On Sept. 16th, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up," on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, based on a confirmation of the intelligence he had received.

—[Late September, 2001] The White House creates a special office to circumvent intelligence agencies.
The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community."

—[December 2002] The Bush Administration lies about the aluminum tubes claim to bolster this nuclear threat.
In late 2002, Colin Powell said, “Iraq has tried to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes which can be used to enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program.” Similarly, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said Iraq “has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”

But, in October 2002, well before these and other administration officials made this claim, two key agencies told the White House exactly the opposite. The State Department affirmed reports from Energy Department experts who concluded those tubes were ill-suited for any kind of uranium enrichment. And according to memos released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the State Department also warned Powell not to use the aluminum tubes hypothesis in the days before his February 2003 U.N. speech. He refused and used the aluminum tubes claim anyway.

The State Department’s warnings were soon validated by the IAEA. In March 2003, the agency’s director stated, “Iraq’s efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to be related” to nuclear weapons deployment.

Yet, this evidence did not stop the White House either. Pretending the administration never received any warnings at all, Rice claimed in July 2003 that “the consensus view” in the intelligence community was that the tubes “were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.”

—[January 2002] The CIA and State Department collaborate on the fact that Iraq was no where near developing a nuclear program
In January 2002,, an intelligence review by CIA Director George Tenet contained not a single mention of an imminent nuclear threat—or capability—from Iraq. The CIA was backed up by Bush’s own State Department: Around the time Bush gave his speech, the department’s intelligence bureau said that evidence did not “add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what [we] consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons.”

—[February 2002] The CIA claims Iraq has not provided WMD's to terrorists
"The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." -- NY Times, February 6th, 2002

—[August 2002] CIA Warnings to the White House are exposed:
In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive.

—[August 2002] DIA tells the White House there is no evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq
An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’ The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions. Read parts of the report for yourself, here.

—[September 2002] Bush lies about Al Qaeda/Iraq Connection
It started on September 25, 2002, when Bush said, “you can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam.” This was news even to members of Bush’s own political party who had access to classified intelligence. Just a month before, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “Saddam is not in league with al Qaeda. I have not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda."

To no surprise, the day after Bush’s statement, USA Today reported several intelligence experts “expressed skepticism” about the claim, with a Pentagon official calling the president’s assertion an “exaggeration.” No matter, Bush ignored these concerns and that day described Saddam Hussein as “a man who loves to link up with al Qaeda.” Meanwhile, Rumsfeld held a press conference trumpeting “bulletproof” evidence of a connection—a sentiment echoed by Rice and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. And while the New York Times noted, “the officials offered no details to back up the assertions,” Rumsfeld nonetheless insisted his claims were “accurate and not debatable.”

—[September 2002] Bush lies about Chemical/Biological weapons threat.
In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq “could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.” The next month, he delivered a major speech to “outline the Iraqi threat,” just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons.” He said that “Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons” and that the government was “concerned Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.”

As the Washington Post later reported, Bush “ignored the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source” of the 45-minute claim and, therefore, omitted it from its intelligence estimates. And Bush ignored the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency previously submitted a report to the administration finding “no reliable information” to prove Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. According to Newsweek, the conclusion was similar to the findings of a 1998 government commission on WMD chaired by Rumsfeld.

Bush also neglected to point out that in early October 2002, the administration’s top military experts told the White House they “sharply disputed the notion that Iraq’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being designed as attack weapons.” Specifically, the Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center correctly showed the drones in question were too heavy to be used to deploy chemical/biological-weapons spray devices.

—[October 2002] Iraq/Al Qaeda connection begins to be debunked
A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in [Bush’s] own government privately have "deep misgivings” about the Iraq-al Qaeda claims. The experts charged that administration hawks “exaggerated evidence.” A senior U.S. official told the Philadelphia Inquirer that intelligence analysts “contest the administration’s suggestion of a major link between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

While this evidence forced British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other allies to refrain from playing up an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, the Bush administration refused to be deterred by facts.

On November 1, 2002, President Bush claimed, “We know [Iraq has] got ties with al Qaeda.” Four days later, Europe’s top terrorism investigator Jean-Louis Bruguiere reported: “We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda. If there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country was helping build the case for war, admitted, “What I’m asked is if I’ve seen any evidence of [Iraq-al Qaeda connections]. And the answer is: ‘I haven’t."

Soon, an avalanche of evidence appeared indicating the White House was deliberately misleading America. In January 2003, intelligence officials told the Los Angeles Times that they were “puzzled by the administration’s new push” to create the perception of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection and said the intelligence community has “discounted—if not dismissed—information believed to point to possible links between Iraq and al Qaeda.” One intelligence official said, “There isn’t a factual basis” for the administration’s conspiracy theory about the so-called connection.

—[December 2002] Cheney Pressures CIA to change Intelligence.
Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed. Additionally, CIA officials charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions. [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]

—[January 2003] State Department reiterates warning to Powell:
"The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]

—[January 2003] Bush lies in State of the Union speech about Iraq/Niger uranium connection.
Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The careful phrasing of this statement highlights how dishonest it was. By attributing the claim to an allied government, the White House made a powerful charge yet protected itself against any consequences should it be proved false. In fact, the president invoked the British because his own intelligence experts had earlier warned the White House not to make the claim at all.

Just months before this speech, the CIA told administration officials not to include this uranium assertion in presidential speeches. Specifically, the agency sent two memos to the White House and Tenet personally called top national security officials imploring them not to use the claim. While the warnings forced the White House to remove a uranium reference from an October 2002 presidential address, they did not stop the charge from being included in the 2003 State of the Union.

Later, US Ambassador Joe Wilson later wrote a piece disproving the uranium claim.

—[February 13, 2003] UN inspectors warn the White House that no WMD's have been found.
"In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections.

—[February 15, 2003] – IAEA warns White house of no nuclear evidence.
The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program

—[March 2003] Despite all this data to the contrary, Dick Cheney announces Iraq as a nuclear threat.
In March 2003, Cheney went on national television days before the war and claimed Iraq “has reconstituted nuclear weapons.” He was echoed by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who told reporters of supposedly grave “concerns about Iraq’s potential nuclear programs.”

—[March 2003] Documents proving the Niger/Iraq connection were officially found to be forgeries by the IAEA.
In March 2003, IAEA Director Mohammed El Baradei said there was no proof Iraq had nuclear weapons and added “documents which formed the basis for [the White House’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” But when Cheney was asked about this a week later, he said, “Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong.” Later in 2003, the CIA is critical of the British intelligence report.

—[June 6, 2003] Intelligence Historian says WMD claims were hyped.
"The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements."

—[August 2003] Former Bush officials expose Al Qaeda threat as complete bullshit
Three former Bush administration officials came forward to admit pre-war evidence tying al Qaeda to Iraq “was tenuous, exaggerated, and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies.” Further, the chairman of the U.N. group that monitors al Qaeda told reporters his team found no evidence linking the terrorist group to Iraq. In July 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported the bipartisan congressional report analyzing September 11 “undercut Bush administration claims before the war that Hussein had links to al Qaeda.” Meanwhile, the New York Times reported, “Coalition forces have not brought to light any significant evidence demonstrating the bond between Iraq and al Qaeda."

—[September 2003] Around this time, Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is outed as being a CIA Agent.
A high-level administration official or officials leaked to the press that Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife was an undercover CIA agent—a move widely seen as an attempt by the administration to punish Wilson for his July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed that stated he had found no evidence of an Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger.

—[March 2004] More officials dismiss Iraq/Al Qaeda claims
Knight Ridder report that quoted administration officials conceding “there never was any evidence that Hussein’s secular police state and Osama bin Laden’s Islamic terror network were in league."

—[June 2004] Bush continues lying about Al Qaeda and Iraq connections
“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

(back to top)

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The Downing Street Memo

As the two major justifications for the war in Iraq - Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, as well as Iraq's bountiful weapons of mass destruction program - didn't exactly come to fruition after the invasion, many people started to suspect that the Bush Administration had already made up it's mind to invade Iraq long before it had led the rest of us to believe it had. Further complicating this is that as the case for war against Iraq was being made, Iraq actually took a number of steps to comply with the U.N. weapons inspection program, which made Bush's press for war all the more puzzling to the world community.

Many on the left felt their suspicions were justified, but it wasn't until the Downing Street Memo was leaked to a London Newspaper that they had any kind of circumstantial proof. Due to lack of American press coverage, there are many who are unaware of the contents of the memo, or even the memo itself. Here are some common questions:

What is the Downing Street Memo?
The Downing Street Memo is an official record of meeting minutes transcribed to document a gathering of high ranking British officials on July 23, 2002—eight months prior to the invasion of Iraq in March '03.

Who Was at the Meeting, and how significant were they to the British government?
See the table below:

British Official	U.S. equivalent (as of 2003)
Tony Blair UK Prime Minister	G.W. Bush U.S. President (ugh)
David Manning Foreign Policy Advisor	Condi Rice National Security Advisor
Geoff Hoon Defense Secretary	Rummy Secretary of Defense
Jack Straw Foreign Secretary	Colin Powell Secretary of State
Lord Goldsmith Attorney General	Alberto Gonzales White House Counsel
Sir Richard Wilson Cabinet Secretary	N/A
John Scarlett Chair - Joint Intelligence Committee	John Negroponte National Intelligence Director
Francis Richards Director - Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)	Michael V. Hayden Director - National Security Agency Director (NSA)
Sir Michael Boyce Chief of Defense Staff	Gen. Richard Myers Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sir Richard Delrove Director of SIS (MI6) Foreign Intelligence Service	George Tenet Head of CIA
Jonathan Powell Chief of Staff	Andrew Card Chief of staff
Sally Morgan Director - Political & Government Relations	N/A
Alastair Campbell Director of Communications & Strategy	Dan Bartlett Communications Director (Counselor to the President)

 

What was contained in the Memo?
In the July 23 memo, Dearlove reported that Bush had decided to wage war on Iraq, and that US policymakers were using "thin" intelligence to make Hussein appear to be a bigger threat that was supported by the facts. His data came from meetings with Bush officials:

Specifically, they state that, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, justified by ...terrorism and WMD" and "...the intelligence and facts were being fixed around policy." It also observed that there was "little discussion...of the aftermath after military action."

Overall the memos paint a picture of how our government did not believe Iraq was a greater threat than other nations; how intelligence was packaged to sell the case for war to both Congress and the American public; and how the Bush Administration's public assurances of "war as a last resort" were at odds with their privately stated intentions.

The Downing Street Memos are important because they state that intelligence and facts were "fixed" to provide a basis for Bush to wage war on Iraq. The memos also say that Bush decided to go to war with Iraq before 2003, and before Congressional approval. Under the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war.

This seems to be the presidency of forged documents - are the Downing Street Memos authentic?
Neither George Bush nor Tony Blair, nor any of their representatives, have denied the authenticity of the minutes and memos.. The American press hesitated to report the May 1, 2005 leaking of these documents due to authenticity concerns. Of course, Dan Rather, suffered great embarrassment in 2004 when he reported on documents later found to be fraudulent. According to Knight Ridder, "a former senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called it 'an absolutely accurate description of what transpired' during Dearlove's visit to Washington." In mid June 2005, the Downing Street Memo disclosures finally became US headlines.

Will Congress Investigate These Disclosures?
In May, Rep John Conyers (D-MI)submitted a letter to President Bush signed by 94 House members requesting answers to 5 questions about Downing Street Memo disclosures. (See questions below.) White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that there is "no need" to respond to the letter.

On June 16, Conyers held an unofficial hearing into this matter. Unofficial because no Republicans will attend, and House Republicans refuse to schedule a formal hearing.

That same day, Conyers delivered to the White House a letter bearing 560,000 signatures (mine included) in addition to those of 122 members of Congress. He asked five simple questions:

-Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?

-Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war; did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?

-Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?

-At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?

-Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

How come I haven't seen much of the memo in the news?
It has been said that the memo wasn't news because everybody understood that George W. Bush had decided to wage war many months before the United States and its allies invaded Iraq. Read that again. In other words, it was said that the Downing Street Memo didn't make news in the States because everyone already knew that Bush was planning on invading Iraq pre-UN-authorization, and even pre-9/11, and that the Downing Street memo was old news.

Consider Michael Kinsley, the Los Angeles Times editorial page editor and columnist, who recently derided the memo's importance. According to his editorial,, "you don't need a secret memo" to know that "the administration's decision to topple Saddam Hussein by force" had been reached by then. Anybody could tell that war was "inevitable," he wrote. "Just look at what was in the newspapers on July 23, 2002, and the day before," he wrote, citing an opinion column by Robert Scheer and a Times story about Pentagon war planning.

- So says former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil.

- So says author Bob Woodward and you can read more here.

- So says a conservative watch dog group, Judicial Watch, which has an entire area of their web site documenting Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force's interest in Iraq's oil fields, mapping terminals and pipelines. (Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush's energy plan.)

- So says the fact that Bush diverted $700 from the real war relating to terrorism, Afghanistan, to prepping for the Iraq invasion, in the summer of 2002

- So says Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector, who on July 20th, 2002 wrote, that despite Bush & Co pushing for war, the inspectors "did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament."

- So says a Time Magazine article written a year before the invasion, which you can read here.

- So says documentation that in 2002, the British Royal Air Force and US military aircraft doubled their rate of bombing in Iraq, trying to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war. The attacks were intensified in May of that year, and by late August they had become a full air offensive. This is BEFORE Bush had the authorization from Congress to go to war. Read more here.

Where can I see the complete set of Downing Street Documents?
Click here.

Are there other documents or evidence related to the Downing Street Memo or confirming it's authenticity?
All related documents be found here.

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The Famous 16 Words

Background | The Story Unravels | Finger Pointing Over the Scandal | Enter Joe Wilson | Enter the Liars | What They Said | A 20 Year Career Destroyed | Plame Wasn't the Only Victim | Open Letter From CIA |

On January 28th, 2003, "as required by law," Bush gave his State of the Union Speech. it was one of the most watched, closely scrutinized State of the Union speeches in history. In it, he delivered one of the strongest, punch-in-the-gut, keep-us-up-at-night phrase of 16 words our nation has ever heard:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

By uttering these words, Bush nearly slam dunked the case for war, and even though the administration had made up their mind by then to invade Iraq, it was really one of the first tugs on the arm of the American people to come along for the ride.

While there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein tried to acquire different types of weapons throughout his decades long dictatorship, including uranium/centrifuge tubes used to make nuclear weapons, the now famous 16-word phrase was significant because in a post-9/11 world, this statement showed 3 major components to make people react: severity, urgency, and most importantly, specifics.

There was only one problem - the evidence supporting the statement above in light blue turned out to be completely false. Let's take a look:

The Story Behind the Story
The President made his statement about Iraq seeking enriched Uranium, or "yellowcake," (a form of lightly processed ore) with the support of documents which claimed that Iraq had attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger. The British Government claimed that they had not seen the particular documents at that point, and that their "conclusions" in support of Bush's statement were based on "separate evidence." Based on the assertion that Saddam was buying 500 tons of yellowcake, it painted the picture of the Middle East and/or terrorist targets as a nuclear time bomb.

The Story Starts to Unravel
-This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else.

-The documents had long been suspected as fakes by United States intelligence, and had been investigated and discounted well before these 2003 presentations. Barbro Owen-Kirkpatrick, Ambassador to Niger, had investigated and "debunked" claims of yellowcake sales to Iraq. In early 2002, Ambassador Joseph Wilson had been dispatched to Niger to investigate the claim of yellowcake sales, prompted by an intelligence report, based on the forgeries, which had been circulated from Vice President Dick Cheney's office. On February 22, 2002 Wilson reported to the CIA and the State Department that the information was "unequivocally wrong."

-Sources said that one of the documents was a letter discussing the uranium deal supposedly signed by Niger President Tandja Mamadou. The sources described the signature as "childlike" and said that it clearly was not Mamadou's.

-Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger in 14 years, sources said.

-Another, allegedly from the president of Niger, bears an obsolete presidential seal on the letterhead

-The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were forgeries. In Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei's March 7 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, said:

"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded."

Let the Finger Pointing Begin!
- According to Fox News (that's right), on July 11, 2003, President Bush put responsibility squarely on the CIA for his erroneous claim that Iraq tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa, prompting the director of intelligence to publicly accept full blame for the miscue.

- Condi Rice was more direct, saying, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety."

- However, A CIA official told the BBC that "doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address (in 2003)."

- Then members of the British (Big Ben) Parliament started pointing fingers at their own government: "It is very odd indeed that the Government asserts that it was not relying on the evidence which has since been shown to have been forged but that eight months later it is still reviewing the other evidence.. We recommend that the Government explain on what evidence it relied for its judgment in September that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. We further recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Africa in the light of subsequent events." - House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report

- Then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer flip flopped on the issue:"The president's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake [uranium] from Niger. So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the president's broader statement."

- Then, UK officials started pointing fingers at US! "The CIA expressed reservations to us about this element of the September dossier.. However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the U.S... A judgment was therefore made to retain it." - UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in a letter to Donald Anderson MP, Chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee

Enter Ambassador Joe Wilson
Joe Wilson, American diplomat between 1976 and 1998, served as ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe under President George H. W. Bush, and helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He was hailed as "truly inspiring" and "courageous" by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than one hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad, and mocking Saddam Hussein's threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners. As a result, in 1990, he also became the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein.

Wilson was sent by the CIA to investigate the claims of Iraq trying to purchase enriched uranium from Africa, and wrote this column, published in the NY Times, disputing the Bush administrations claims.

Enter Karl Rove and Other Lying Sonsofbitches
As you can imagine, Wilson's op-ed piece in the New York Times wasn't much at all appreciated by the Bush administration. That's when conservative columnist Robert Novak discussed Ambassador Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in a syndicated article published on July 14, 2003. In it, Novak alleged that Plame had a role in selecting Wilson for his trip to Niger, hence asserting unprofessional conduct.

Immediately everyone wanted to know how the source was for Novak's article, because outing and undercover CIA operative is a federal crime. Soon, emails given up by Time Magazine., which are largely between reporter Mat Cooper (who had a conversation with one Karl Rove regarding Joe Wilson's article) and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House.

Here's what we know and most importantly, what was said regarding PlameGate:

• On September 16, 2003, when the story of Valerie Plame being outed first broke, Karl Rove was asked by an ABC producer Andrea Owen:
  Owen: "Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?"
  Rove: "No."
  
• Sept 29, 2003: Scott McClellan in a press briefing said, "[Karl Rove] wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved." Asked how he knows by a reporter, McClellan said, "The President knows." Later in the briefing he said, "I've made it very clear, from the beginning, that it is totally ridiculous. I've known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct." (listen here)
  
• On Sept 30, 2003, in his 3rd grade sophistication, Bush said, "Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."
  
• Also on Sept 30, 2003, RNC Chairperson Ed Gillespie said, “I think if the allegation is true, to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative — it’s abhorrent, and it should be a crime, and it is a crime.”
  
• Again on Sept 30, 2003, Colin Powell said, “Not only do you put her at risk, or any undercover agent at risk, by letting it be known that they are an agent, but you also put the sources they have worked with over the years at considerable risk.”
  
• On October 1, 2003, during the "ongoing investigation" of the Valerie Plame leak scandal, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, it was a "ridiculous suggestion" that Rove was "involved in leaking classified information." He went on to say, "Let me make it very clear. As I said previously, he [Karl Rove] was not involved, and that allegation is not true in terms of leaking classified information, nor would he condone it."
  
• On October 2, 2003, Karen Hughes, political advisor to the president said, “President Bush has said — and I agree — there are too many leaks in Washington. We didn’t experience that kind of situation when we were here in Texas. I think it’s very disruptive to democracy… Whoever did this leak obviously was not serving President Bush very well.”
  
• On October 6th 2003, Bush said, "This is a very serious matter. And our administration takes it seriously… this is a serious charge, by the way. We’re talking about a criminal action.”
  
• On October 16, 2003, John Ashcroft said, “Let me just indicate that this is a matter of great concern to me, that I have not ruled out any options. Leaks are a serious matter. When information is classified, it’s classified for a reason, and classified because it is in the national interest of the United States of America that the information not be shared. And anyone who purposefully leaks information that has been classified is, for some reason — it’s incomprehensible to me, but for some reason — subordinating a national security — if they purposefully leak information — suborting the national security in the interests of the United States to some interests of their own.”
  
• Meanwhile, Rove told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Joe Wilson's wife was "fair game," according to an October 2003 report in Newsweek.
  
• On 2004, in a CNN Interview, Karl Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin said, "Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn't disclose Valerie Plame's identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else . . . Who outed this woman? . . . It wasn't Karl." Luskin said Rove "certainly did not disclose to Matt Cooper or anybody else any confidential information."
  
• On June 10, 2004 whether he stood by his pledge to "fire anyone" involved in the leak case, Bush answered, "yes."
  
• Then, at the RNC of '04, Karl Rove in an interview with CNN said that he, "didn't know her name and didn't leak her name." (listen here)
  A number of factors weigh against Rove's assertion.
  • First, Rove identified Valerie Plame as "Wilson's wife." Under section 421 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act the disclosure of "any information identifying [a] covert agent" is illegal.
  • Second, Rove's lawyer is undermining the distinction between naming and identifying Plame as too legalistic and a minor detail.
  • Third, Rove insisted on speaking to Cooper only on "double super secret background." As Andrew Sullivan notes on his blog, "Why would Rove have insisted on such a super-tight confidentiality standard if he was not aware that he was divulging something he truly shouldn't divulge?"
  • Fourth, as Joe Wilson himself has indicated, his wife goes by Mrs. Wilson, so it would have been clear who Rove was talking about (and Rove attended the same church as the Wilson family, indicating he may know more about Plame than he's letting on)
    
• It was later discovered that Rove talked to both of the journalists who are known to have published original accounts about Plame (both Matt Cooper and Bob Novak)

Despite everything you see above, as of July 20th, 2005, Bush remains steadfastly behind Rove and his Smear of Joe Wilson.

Plame wasn't the only victim of Rove's Leak
In late 2003, the Washington Post revealed that Plame's outing had "also exposed the identity of a CIA front company," and so might "have damaged U.S. national security to a much greater extent than generally realized." One former high-level agency official said the front firm was "apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk," meaning that "once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered." A former diplomat warned the Post that "every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities." The exposure of the front firm forced the CIA's Directorate of Operations to conduct an "extensive damage assessment," though its results have never been released.

A 20-year Career was destroyed
Valerie Plame spent most of her adult life in the CIA, joining "shortly after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in journalism." Retired agency officer Larry Johnson, who trained with Plame when both entered the CIA in the mid-1980s, explains that "[a] few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed." Clandestine service officers working under such cover "are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence," the New York Times reports. And training those agents "costs millions of dollars and requires the time-consuming establishment of elaborate fictions, called 'legends,' including in this case the creation of a CIA front company that helped lend plausibility to her trips overseas." "This situation has been very hard on her, professionally and personally," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, a former C.I.A. case officer and a friend of Plame, told the Times. "Not only have you removed from the playing field a very knowledgeable counter proliferation officer at a time when we really need her services. But before this she was on a fast track as a candidate for senior management at the agency. With something like this, her career will never recover." And the assault continues to this day. Larry Johnson notes that as "operatives fan out on the airwaves in an unrelenting assault on [Plame's] character and reputation, ...Valerie, who is still a full time employee of the CIA, is not allowed to defend herself."

What do some members of CIA think about the partisan attacks by the Republicans?

18 July 2005

AN OPEN STATEMENT TO THE LEADERS OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE.

The Honorable Dennis Hastert, Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives
The Honorable Dr. William Frist, Majority Leader of the Senate
The Honorable Harry Reid, Minority Leader of the Senate

We, the undersigned former U.S. intelligence officers are concerned with the tone and substance of the public debate over the ongoing Department of Justice investigation into who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other members of the media, which exposed her status as an undercover CIA officer. The disclosure of Ms. Plame's name was a shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, may have damaged U.S. national security and poses a threat to the ability of U.S. intelligence gathering using human sources. Any breach of the code of confidentiality and cover weakens the overall fabric of intelligence, and, directly or indirectly, jeopardizes the work and safety of intelligence workers and their sources.

The Republican National Committee has circulated talking points to supporters to use as part of a coordinated strategy to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. As part of this campaign a common theme is the idea that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame was not undercover and deserved no protection. The following are four recent examples of this "talking point":

Michael Medved stated on Larry King Live on July 12, 2005, "And let's be honest about this. Mrs. Plame, Mrs. Wilson, had a desk job at Langley. She went back and forth every single day."

Victoria Toensing stated on a Fox News program with John Gibson on July 12, 2005 that, "Well, they weren't taking affirmative measures to protect that identity. They gave her a desk job in Langley. You don't really have somebody deep undercover going back and forth to Langley, where people can see them."

Ed Rodgers, Washington Lobbyist and former Republican official, said on July 13, 2005 on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, "And also I think it is now a matter of established fact that Mrs. Plame was not a protected covert agent, and I don't think there's any meaningful investigation about that."

House majority whip Roy Blunt (R, Mo), on Face the Nation, July 17, 2005, "It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the CIA might have been overzealous in sort of maintaining the kind of top-secret definition on things longer than they needed to. You know, this was a job that the ambassador's wife had that she went to every day. It was a desk job. I think many people in Washington understood that her employment was at the CIA, and she went to that office every day."

These comments reveal an astonishing ignorance of the intelligence community and the role of cover. The fact is that there are thousands of U.S. intelligence officers who "work at a desk" in the Washington, D.C. area every day who are undercover. Some have official cover, and some have non-official cover. Both classes of cover must and should be protected.

While we are pleased that the U.S. Department of Justice is conducting an investigation and that the U.S. Attorney General has recused himself, we believe that the partisan attacks against Valerie Plame are sending a deeply discouraging message to the men and women who have agreed to work undercover for their nation's security.

We are not lawyers and are not qualified to determine whether the leakers technically violated the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. However, we are confident that Valerie Plame was working in a cover status and that our nation's leaders, regardless of political party, have a duty to protect all intelligence officers. We believe it is appropriate for the President to move proactively to dismiss from office or administratively punish any official who participated in any way in revealing Valerie Plame's status. Such an act by the President would send an unambiguous message that leaks of this nature will not be tolerated and would be consistent with his duties as the Commander-in-Chief.

We also believe it is important that Congress speak with one non-partisan voice on this issue. Intelligence officers should not be used as political footballs. In the case of Valerie Plame, she still works for the CIA and is not in a position to publicly defend her reputation and honor. We stand in her stead and ask that Republicans and Democrats honor her service to her country and stop the campaign of disparagement and innuendo aimed at discrediting Mrs. Wilson and her husband.

Our friends and colleagues have difficult jobs gathering the intelligence, which helps, for example, to prevent terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad. They sometimes face great personal risk and must spend long hours away from family and friends. They serve because they love this country and are committed to protecting it from threats from abroad and to defending the principles of liberty and freedom. They do not expect public acknowledgement for their work, but they do expect and deserve their government's protection of their covert status.

For the good of our country, we ask you to please stand up for every man and woman who works for the U.S. intelligence community and help protect their ability to live their cover.

Sincerely yours,
Larry C. Johnson, former Analyst, CIA

JOINED BY:

Mr. Brent Cavan, former Analyst, CIA
Mr. Vince Cannistraro, former Case Officer, CIA
Mr. Michael Grimaldi, former Analyst, CIA
Mr. Mel Goodman, former senior Analyst, CIA
Col. W. Patrick Lang (US Army retired), former Director, Defense Humint Services, DIA
Mr. David MacMichael, former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA
Mr. James Marcinkowski, former Case Officer, CIA
Mr. Ray McGovern, former senior Analyst and PDB Briefer, CIA
Mr. Jim Smith, former Case Officer, CIA
Mr. William C. Wagner, former Case Officer, CIA

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Top 25 Mistakes of the Iraq War

1. Failing to build a real international coalition prior to the Iraq invasion, forcing the US to shoulder the full cost and consequences of the war.

2. Approving the demobilization of the Iraqi Army in May, 2003 – bypassing the Joint Chiefs of Staff and reversing an earlier position, the President left hundreds of thousands of armed Iraqis disgruntled and unemployed, contributing significantly to the massive security problems American troops have faced during occupation.

3. Not equipping troops in Iraq with adequate body armor or armored HUMVEES. The administration didn't make any significant changes until Specialist Thomas Wilson brought the subject up in a much publicized press conference. (read about it here, here, here, here, here and here)

4. Ignoring the advice Gen. Eric Shinseki regarding the need for more troops in Iraq – now Bush is belatedly adding troops, having allowed the security situation to deteriorate in exactly the way Shinseki said it would if there were not enough troops. Shinseki was then retired early.

5. Ignoring plans drawn up by the Army War College and other war-planning agencies, which predicted most of the worst security and infrastructure problems America faced in the early days of the Iraq occupation.

6. Making a case for war which ignored intelligence that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. (more here, here, here and here).

7. Deriding "nation-building" during the 2000 debates, then engaging American troops in one of the most explicit instances of nation building in American history.

8. Predicting along with others in his administration that US troops would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.

9. Predicting Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction.

10. Wildly underestimating the cost of the war.

11. Trusting Ahmed Chalabi, who has dismissed faulty intelligence he provided the President as necessary for getting the Americans to topple Saddam.

12. Disbanding the Sunni Baathist managers responsible for Iraq's water, electricity, sewer system and all the other critical parts of that country's infrastructure.

13. Failing to give UN weapons inspectors enough time to certify if weapons existed in Iraq.

14. Including discredited intelligence concerning Nigerian Yellow Cake in his 2003 State of the Union.

15. Announcing that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, below a "Mission Accomplished" banner – more U.S. soldiers have died in combat since Bush's announcement than before it.

16. Awarding a multi-billion dollar contract to Halliburton in Iraq, which then repeatedly overcharged the government (more here) and served troops dirty food.

17. Refusing to cede any control of Post-invasion Iraq to the international community, meaning reconstruction has received limited aid from European allies or the U.N.

18. Failing to convince NATO allies why invading Iraq was important.

19. Having no real plan for the occupation of Iraq.

20. Limiting bidding on Iraq construction projects to "coalition partners," unnecessarily alienating important allies France, Germany and Russia.

21. Diverting $700 million into Iraq invasion planning without informing Congress.

22. Shutting down an Iraqi newspaper for "inciting violence" – the move, which led in short order to street fighting in Fallujah, incited more violence than the newspaper ever had.

23. Telling Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before Secretary of State Colin Powell.

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In Their Own Words:
Statements About the War in Iraq

Saddam is Contained | Saddam is a Threat | Saddam Might Have Been a Threat | We Found WMD's | No, We Didn't | Iraq & Al Qaeda | What They Said About Kosovo