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The Downing Street Memo Comes To Washington, Conyers Blasts "Deafening Sound of Silence"
We speak with Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) who is convening a public hearing tomorrow in Washington on the so-called
Downing
Street Memo and other newly released documents that he says show the Bush administration's "efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence." We also speak with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Broadcast - 06/15/05
Tomorrow in Washington, Congressmember John Conyers of Michigan,
the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, will
convene a public hearing on the so-called Downing
Street Memo and
other newly released documents that Conyers says show the
administration's "efforts to cook the books on pre-war
intelligence." Conyers also says that he plans to raise new
documents that back up the accuracy of the Downing Streets memo,
which is actually the classified minutes of a July 2002 meeting of
Tony Blair and his senior advisers.
The minutes, which were published May 1 by the Sunday Times of
London, paint a picture of an administration that had already
committed to attacking Iraq, was manipulating intelligence and had
already begun intense bombing of Iraq to prepare for the ground
invasion. This was almost a year before the actual invasion
officially began. The minutes are from a July 23, 2002 briefing of
Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security advisers
by British intelligence chief Richard Dearlove. The minutes
contain an account of Dearlove's report that President George W.
Bush had decided to bring about "regime change" in Iraq
by military action; that the attack would be "justified by
the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" (weapons of mass
destruction); and that "the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy."
Meanwhile, this past weekend, The
Sunday Times of London had another expose, showing that British cabinet members were warned
that the UK was committed to taking part in a US-led invasion of
Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The memo was written in advance of the Downing Street meeting that
produced the Downing Street Minutes.
Despite the explosive information in these documents, they have
received very little attention in the corporate media in this
country and Bush administration officials have only been asked
about it a handful of times. On June 7, after more than a month of
media silence, a reporter for the Reuters news agency finally
questioned President Bush and Tony Blair on the Downing Street
Memo.
- President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, Joint news
conference, June 7, 2005.
The Conyers hearing is scheduled for tomorrow on Capitol Hill but
only today did Conyers announce that they would be inside of the
Capitol. Until this morning, they were scheduled to take place at
the Democratic National Committee because the Republicans
controlling the House Judiciary Committee refused to permit the
ranking Democratic Member, John Conyers, to hold official
hearings. Conyers now says he has managed to get an official room.
Among those scheduled to testify tomorrow are former US
ambassador to Iraq, Joe Wilson, attorney John Bonifaz and parents
of soldiers killed in Iraq. The hearings will be followed by a
rally outside the White House tomorrow evening and a petition with
some half a million signatures will be delivered to the White
House, calling on Bush to answer questions on the memo.
- Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), tomorrow he will be
convening hearings on Capitol Hill on the Downing Street
Minutes.
- Ray McGovern, 27-year career analyst with the CIA.
During the Reagan administration, he was the senior
intelligence briefer of then-Vice President George HW Bush. He
is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity.
For more information go to: AfterDowningStreet.org
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