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New Book Reveals Secret War Operations
By Associated Press
01/03/06 "AP"
-- -- WASHINGTON - A new book on the government's
secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an
Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from
her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on
the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her
questions about the nuclear program because - he said - it had been
dead for a decade.
New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate
how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of
mass destruction. His book, "State of War: The Secret History of the
CIA and the Bush Administration" describes secret operations of the
Bush administration's war on terrorism.
The major revelation in the book has already been the subject of
extensive reporting by Risen's newspaper: the National Security
Agency's eavesdropping of Americans' conversations without obtaining
warrants from a special court.
The book said Dr. Alhaddad flew home in mid-September 2002 and had a
series of meetings with CIA analysts. She relayed her brother's
information that there was no nuclear program.
A CIA operative later told Dr. Alhaddad's husband that the agency
believed her brother was lying. In all, the book says, some 30
family members of Iraqis made trips to their native country to
contact Iraqi weapons scientists, and all of them reported that the
programs had been abandoned.
In October 2002, a month after the doctor's trip to Baghdad, the U.S
intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that
concluded Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.
In the book, which quotes extensively from anonymous sources, Risen
said the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began
to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas, and took their
computers, cell phones and personal phone directories.
The CIA turned the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the
material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone
numbers - in addition to anyone in contact with the telephone
subscribers, the book said, saying this led to an expansion of the
monitoring, both overseas and in the United States.
The book said the NSA does not need approval from the White House,
the Justice Department or anyone else in the Bush administration
before it begins eavesdropping on a specific phone line in the
United States.
In another chapter on a "rogue operation," the book said a CIA
officer mistakenly sent one of its Iranian agents information that
could be used to identify virtually every spy the agency had in
Iran. The book said the Iranian was a double agent who turned over
the data to Iranian security officials.
The book said the information severely damaged the CIA's Iranian
network, and quoted CIA sources as saying several of the U.S. agents
were arrested and jailed.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press
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