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
By John Byrne
09/08/08 "Raw
Story" -- - 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
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