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9-11 Inside Job and Neocons Hacked 2004
Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery
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.
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.
