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President Reagan signs into law the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, originally sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and Representative Bill Nichols (D-AL). Goldwater-Nichols, as it is sometimes called, sparks the largest reorganization of the US military since the National Security Act of 1947. Operational authority is centralized through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as opposed to the actual service chiefs themselves. The chairman is designated as the primary military adviser to the president, the National Security Council (NSC), and the secretary of defense. The legislation also reorganizes the military command structure into several "commands":
By geographical region (Northern Command, or NORTHCOM; Central Command, or CENTCOM; European Command, or EUCOM; Pacific Command, or PACOM; and Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM); and
By function (Joint Forces Command, or JFCOM; Special Operations Command, or SOCOM; Strategic Command, or STRATCOM; and Transportation Command, or TRANSCOM). (Statement on Signing the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 10/1/1986 ; Lederman 1999; Wilson 2004, pp. 212; US Air Force Air University 11/21/2007; National Defense University Library 2/10/2008)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) physically assaults a Nicaraguan official during a diplomatic mission by US lawmakers to Managua. According to a witness, fellow senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), McCain is the co-chair, with Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), of the bipartisan Central American Negotiations Observer Group; Cochran is a member of the group. They are in a meeting with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, the leader of the ruling Sandinistas, and several Nicaraguan diplomats, discussing tensions between the two countries. A number of armed Nicaraguan soldiers are also in the room. Cochran recalls that tensions in the room are high due to the heavy pressure being brought to bear by the US against the Nicaraguans. The American lawmakers are pressing "pretty hard," Cochran will recall. During the discussions, "McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention," Cochran later says. "But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don't know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him." McCain does not actually strike the Nicaraguan, and the two eventually retake their seats. Cochran will recall that the Nicaraguan appears "ruffled" after the incident. (Biloxi Sun-Herald 6/30/2008; Biloxi Sun-Herald 7/1/2008; Associated Press 7/2/2008) In 2008, McCain will call Cochran's story "simply untrue." (Halperin 7/2/2008) "I had many, many meetings with the Sandinistas," McCain will say. "I must say, I did not admire the Sandinistas much. But there was never anything of that nature. It just didn't happen." (Associated Press 7/2/2008)
Over a period of four years, the CIA's Iraq Operation Group provides the Iraqi National Congress (INC) with $100 million, which the organization uses to set up training camps and propaganda operations in Northern Iraq. (Murphy 6/15/2004; Ritter 2005, pp. 128) During this time span, INC leader Ahmed Chalabi allegedly misuses a lot of the funds. "There was a lot of hanky-panky with the accounting: triple billing, things that weren't mentioned, things inflated.… It was a nightmare," a US intelligence official who works with Chalabi will say in 2004. (Hosenball and Hirsh 4/5/2004) Chalabi refuses to share the organization's books with other members of the INC, and even with the US government itself. According to a former CIA officer, "[T]hey argued that it would breach the secrecy of the operation." One night, government investigators break into the INC's offices to do an audit. They find that although the books are in order, many of the group's expenditures are wasteful. (Mayer 6/7/2004) Chalabi spends much of his time in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Robert Baer, a CIA officer who is also working in Iraq, later recalls: "He was like the American Ambassador to Iraq. He could get to the White House and the CIA. He would move around Iraq with five or six Land Cruisers." Hundreds of thousands of dollars flow "to this shadowy operator—in cars, salaries—and it was just a Potemkin village. He was reporting no intel; it was total trash. The INC's intelligence was so bad, we weren't even sending it in." Chalabi tries to portray Saddam Hussein's regime as "a leaking warehouse of gas, and all we had to do was light a match," Baer says. Chalabi, at certain points, claims to know about Iraqi troop movements and palace plans. But "there was no detail, no sourcing—you couldn't see it on a satellite." (Mayer 6/7/2004) In her 2007 book Fair Game, former CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, an expert on Iraq's WMD programs, describes Chalabi as "Machiavellian," and blames him for sending "dozens of tantalizing but ultimately false leads into the CIA net." (Wilson 2007, pp. 106-107)
The US and Britain launch a joint series of over 250 air strikes against Iraqi military targets, in a campaign dubbed "Operation Desert Fox." The air strikes are designed to, in the mission statement released by the US Navy, "degrade Saddam Hussein's ability to make and to use weapons of mass destruction," to "diminish Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war against his neighbors," and to "demonstrate to Saddam Hussein the consequences of violating international obligations." The air strikes are carried out by US Navy and Marine Corps aircraft from the USS Enterprise, from US and British military bases in the region. The strikes feature, among other weaponry, over 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from naval vessels and US Air Force B-52s. Defense officials say that many of the strikes focus on destroying or damaging targets in southern Iraq, including surface-to-air missile sites, airfields, and command-and-control sites, all with the aim of giving US pilots a "safer corridor" to reach targets in the north. (Stone 12/18/1998; Barletta and Jorgensen 5/1999; Roberts 2008, pp. 121; US Department of Defense 3/7/2008) Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz will later say that at least 62 Iraqis are killed in the strikes. No US or British casualties are reported. (BBC 2002)
Failure to Comply with UN Inspections - President Bill Clinton explains that the military operation was in response to Iraq's refusal to comply with UN weapons inspections (see December 16, 1998). "The international community gave Saddam one last chance to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors," Clinton says. "Saddam's deception has defeated their effectiveness. Instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam, the Iraqi dictator has disarmed the inspectors.… Saddam has failed to seize the chance. So we had to act and act now." Clinton continues, "Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons." He has used them before, Clinton adds, and "left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again." (Kozaryn 12/17/1998) US Secretary of Defense William Cohen says that the attacks "degraded Saddam Hussein's ability to deliver chemical and biological weapons," and defends the US's right to act unilaterally against Iraq if it is in "our national interest." British Prime Minister Tony Blair agrees with Clinton's assessment. "He is a serial breaker of promises," Blair says. (CNN 12/16/1998)
Real Aim to Destabilize Hussein? - In January 1999, reporter William Arkin, a defense specialist, will write that he believes the strikes were designed to do far more than punish Iraq for not complying with UN inspections. The extremely specific target listings—down to specific buildings—and the nature of the targets chosen will lead Arkin to believe that Desert Fox was designed to cripple Iraq's ability to wage war. Only 13 of the 100 or so sites were identified as chemical or biological weapons production or research facilities, Arkin will write. Additionally, Arkin will comment that the US-British strikes were not just to "degrade" Iraq's military capabilities, but to destabilize the Hussein regime. (Arkin 1/17/1999)
Accusations of Political Distraction - Many of Clinton's political opponents, including Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators and radio hosts, accuse Clinton, both during and after the strikes, of attempting to use a military operation to distract the nation from his admission of a sexual liaison with intern Monica Lewinsky. (BBC 2002)
Destroys Remainder of Iraq's WMD Stockpiles - In 2004, US weapons inspector David Kay will say that Desert Fox and other 1998 air strikes destroyed the remaining stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons left over from the Gulf War (see January 23, 2004).
The US Central Command, or CENTCOM (see October 1, 1986), conducts a series of war games called "Desert Crossing" centered on the scenario of Saddam Hussein being ousted as Iraq's dictator. CENTCOM commander General Anthony Zinni will later say of the scenario, "I thought we ought to look at political reconstruction, economic reconstruction, security reconstruction, humanitarian need, services, and infrastructure development." The game concludes that unless measures are taken, "fragmentation and chaos" will ensue after his overthrow. The after-action report finds that regime change may cause instability throughout the Middle East by giving impetus to "rival forces bidding for power" which, in turn, could cause societal "fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines" and antagonize "aggressive neighbors." Securing borders and civil order may not be enough to restabilize Iraq, the report speculates, if the new government is perceived as either weak, subservient to outside governments, or out of touch with other Middle Eastern governments. The report finds that an exit strategy would be complicated by differing ideas for how a post-Saddam Iraq should be. Any US-supported transitional government will find it difficult to restrain various factions from pursuing their own tribal and sectarian vendettas against one another, the report finds. The game is quickly forgotten; years later, when the Bush administration will begin planning for its invasion of Iraq, the retired Zinni will recommend that his successors "dust off Desert Crossing," and they will respond: "What's that? Never heard of it." (John Prados 11/4/2006; Roberts 2008, pp. 125, 233)
Former CIA Director James Woolsey makes a secret trip to Europe to find evidence that could link the Iraqi government to various terrorist attacks. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz funds and supports his trip. He visits Wales in a fruitless search for evidence to link Iraq to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see Late September 2001). But he also looks for evidence tying Iraq to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks once they become publicly known in early October (see October 5-November 21, 2001). The Village Voice will later report, "Woolsey was also asked to make contact with Iraqi exiles and others who might be able to beef up the case that hijacker Mohamed Atta was working with Iraqi intelligence to plan the September 11 attacks, as well as the subsequent anthrax mailings." (Vest 11/21/2001) In late October, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the exile group opposed to Saddam Hussein, says it recently held meetings in London with him. (Harden 10/26/2001) Woolsey is a prominent neoconservative and already has extensive links with the INC (see 2000). It is unknown exactly what Woolsey does in Europe, but his trip has an apparent effect on the media. In addition to numerous articles about Atta's alleged Prague visit, some articles appear attempting to tie Atta and the Iraqi government to the anthrax attacks as well. For instance, on October 14, 2001, The Observer will report, "According to sources in the Bush administration, investigators are talking to Egyptian authorities who say members of the al-Qaeda network, detained and interrogated in Cairo, had obtained phials of anthrax in the Czech Republic." (Rose and Vulliamy 10/14/2001) And in late October, the London Times will not only report that Atta was given a vial of anthrax in Prague, but that he met with Iraqi agents numerous times all over Europe (see October 27, 2001). But no hard evidence will emerge supporting any of these allegations pushed by Woolsey.
The Defense Policy Board (DPB) meets in secret in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon conference room on September 19 and 20 for 19 hours to discuss the option of taking military action against Iraq. (Sciolino and Tyler 10/12/2001) They also discuss how they might overcome some of the diplomatic and political pressures that would likely attempt to impede a policy of regime change in Iraq. (Sciolino and Tyler 10/12/2001) Among those attending the meeting are Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Princeton academic Bernard Lewis, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996), Chalabi's aide Francis Brooke, and the 18 members of the DPB. (Sciolino and Tyler 10/12/2001; Burrough et al. 5/2004, pp. 236; Mayer 6/7/2004) Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will later call the DPB "a neocon[servative] sanctuary," boasting such members as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former arms control adviser Ken Adelman, former Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle, and former Vice President Dan Quayle. (Lang 6/2004)
Powell, State Officials Not Informed of Meeting - Secretary of State Colin Powell and other State Department officials in charge of US policy toward Iraq are not invited and are not informed of the meeting. A source will later tell the New York Times that Powell was irritated about not being briefed on the meeting. (Sciolino and Tyler 10/12/2001)
Chalabi, Lewis Lead Discussion - During the seminar, two of Richard Perle's invited guests, Chalabi and Lewis, lead the discussion. Lewis says that the US must encourage democratic reformers in the Middle East, "such as my friend here, Ahmed Chalabi." Chalabi argues that Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists and asserts that Saddam Hussein's regime has weapons of mass destruction. (Burrough et al. 5/2004, pp. 232; Lang 6/2004) He also asserts "there'd be no resistance" to an attack by the US, "no guerrilla warfare from the Ba'athists, and [it would be] a quick matter of establishing a government." (Mayer 6/7/2004)
Overthrow of Hussein Advocated - Attendees write a letter to President Bush calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. "[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack [of 9/11], any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism," the letter reads. The letter is published in the Washington Times on September 20 (see September 20, 2001) in the name of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank that believes the US needs to shoulder the responsibility for maintaining "peace" and "security" in the world by strengthening its global hegemony. (Project for the New American Century 9/20/2001; Lobe 7/19/2003) Bush reportedly rejects the letter's proposal, as both Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell agree that there is no evidence implicating Saddam Hussein in the 9/11 attacks. (Sciolino and Tyler 10/12/2001)
Woolsey Sent to Find Evidence of Hussein's Involvement - As a result of the meeting, Wolfowitz sends Woolsey to London to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks and the earlier 1993 attack on the World Trade Center (see Mid-September-October 2001). (Lang 6/2004)
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter addressed to President Bush and signed by magazine publisher William Kristol, Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle (see September 16, 2001), and 38 other neoconservatives and hardliners. It is reprinted by Kristol's Weekly Standard shortly thereafter. The authors threaten to brand Bush as a "wimp," guilty of "surrender in the war on international terrorism" if he fails to carry out their demand to make "a determined effort" to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack[s]." (Project for the New American Century 9/20/2001; Rich 2006, pp. 28) Any failure to attack Iraq, the authors say, "will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." Invading Iraq is not their only demand. To retain their support, the letter reads, Bush must also target the terror organization Hezbollah for eradication, and retaliate against Syria and Iran if they do not break their ties with Hezbollah. The letter calls Israel "America's staunchest ally against international terrorism." Conservative isolationist Pat Buchanan will later write that the real motive for this letter seems to be tied to Israel: "Here was a cabal of intellectuals telling the commander in chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11. What had Hezbollah done? Hezbollah had humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon. President Bush had been warned. He was to exploit the attack of 9/11 to launch a series of wars on Arab regimes, none of which had attacked us. All, however, were enemies of Israel.… The War Party [Bush administration neoconservatives] seemed desperate to get a Middle East war going before America had second thoughts." (Project for the New American Century 9/20/2001; Buchanan 3/24/2003)
At the behest of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former CIA Director James Woolsey and a team of Justice and Defense Department officials fly to London on a US government plane to look for evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Woolsey's trip is in part the idea of neoconservative author Laurie Mylroie (see Late July or Early August 2001). It is the second such mission undertaken by Woolsey this year, as he made a similar trip in February (see February 2001). Woolsey is looking for evidence to support the theory (see Late July or Early August 2001 and Mid-September-October 2001) that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 WTC bombing, was actually an Iraqi agent who had assumed the identity of a Pakistani student named Abdul Basit. Woolsey visits the Swansea Institute, where Basit studied, to see if Basit's fingerprints match those of Yousef, who is now serving a life sentence in a Colorado prison. Matching fingerprints would discredit the theory. (Strobel 10/11/2001; Rose and Vulliamy 10/14/2001; Harden 10/26/2001; Lang 6/2004) While in Europe, Woolsey also attempts to link the Iraqi government to 9/11 and the October 2001 anthrax attacks (see Mid-September-October 2001). But according to Knight Ridder, "Several of those with knowledge of the trips said they failed to produce any new evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks." (Strobel 10/11/2001) Newsweek will similarly report in 2004 that "the results of the Woolsey mission were exactly what the FBI had predicted: that the fingerprints were in fact identical." (Isikoff and Hosenball 4/21/2004) The local police in Swansea are curious about Woolsey's visit and they call the US embassy in London to clarify if Woolsey is visiting in an official capacity. This alerts the State Department and CIA of Woolsey's trip for the first time, and apparently both agencies are upset. One intelligence consultant familiar with the trip will say, "It was a stupid, stupid, and just plain wrong thing to do." (Strobel 10/11/2001; Vest 11/21/2001) It is through this contact that Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet learn of Woolsey's mission (see September 19-20, 2001). (Lang 6/2004)
Veteran CIA officer Gary Schroen and his team of CIA operatives known as "Jawbreaker" is helicoptered into the Panjshir Valley of northeastern Afghanistan. This area, about 70 miles north of Kabul, is controlled by the Northern Alliance. The team of about 10 operatives carries communications equipment so they can directly communicate with CIA headquarters back in the US. Schroen also carries a suitcase containing $3 million in non-sequential $100 bills. That same evening, Schroen meets with Muhammed Arif Sawari, known as Engineer Aref, head of the Northern Alliance's intelligence service. He gives Aref $500,000 and promises much more money and support soon. The Jawbreaker team will remain the only US forces on the ground in Afghanistan until about the middle of October. (Woodward 11/18/2002) Before the Jawbreaker team deploys, J. Cofer Black, the CIA's Washington coordinator for Jawbreaker, gave the men instructions that author Jeremy Scahill will later call "direct and macabre." Black told the men: "I don't want bin Laden and his thugs captured, I want them dead.… They must be killed. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes. I want bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to be able to show bin Laden's head to the president. I promised him I would do that" (see September 19, 2001). Schroen will later say it was the first time in his career he had been ordered to assassinate an enemy rather than attempt a capture. (Scahill 8/20/2009)
Following a number of meetings in Rome and London between SISMI, Italy's military intelligence, and the British MI6 (Bamford 2004, pp. 303-304) , SISMI provides the British with an intelligence report on Iraq's alleged efforts to obtain uranium from Niger. The report—delivered by freelance SISMI agent Rocco Martino to the Vauxhall Cross headquarters of Britain's MI6 in south London—is reportedly based on the collection of mostly forged documents put together in Italy (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001). MI6 will include this information in a report it sends to Washington saying only that it was obtained from a "reliable source." Washington treats the report as an independent confirmation of the Italian report (see October 15, 2001). (Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/24/2005; Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/25/2005; Collier 10/30/2005; Buncombe, Phillips, and Whitaker 11/6/2005; Unger 2007, pp. 228-229)
Veteran CIA agent Gary Berntsen leads a CIA undercover team, codenamed Jawbreaker, to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan (see September 26, 2001). In a 2005 book, also called Jawbreaker, Berntsen will describe how his team monitored multiple intelligence reports tracking bin Laden on a path through Jalalabad to Tora Bora (see November 13, 2001). He will claim that at the start of December 2001, one of his Arabic-speaking CIA agents finds a radio on a dead al-Qaeda fighter during a battle in the Tora Bora region. This agent hears bin Laden repeatedly attempt to rally his troops. On the same radio, that agent and another CIA agent who speaks Arabic hear bin Laden apologizing to his troops for getting them trapped and killed by US aerial bombing. Based on this information, Berntsen makes a formal request for 800 US troops to be deployed along the Pakistani border to prevent bin Laden's escape. The request is not granted. Berntsen's lawyer later claims, "Gary coordinated most of the boots on the ground. We knew where bin Laden was within a very circumscribed area. It was full of caves and tunnels but we could have bombed them or searched them one by one. The Pentagon failed to deploy sufficient troops to seal them off." Although the area is heavily bombed, bin Laden is able to escape (see Mid-December 2001). (Berntsen and Pezzullo 2005, pp. 43-64; Baxter 8/14/2005; MSNBC 12/29/2005; Spiegel 1/3/2006) A Knight Ridder investigative report will later conclude, "While more than 1,200 US Marines [sit] at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders [rely] on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British, and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan." Military and intelligence officials warn Franks that the two main Afghan commanders cannot be trusted. This turns out to be correct, as the warlords accept bribes from al-Qaeda leaders to let them escape. (Knight Ridder 10/30/2004) In 2005, Berntsen will call himself a supporter of Bush and will say he approves of how CIA Director Porter Goss is running the CIA, but he will nonetheless sue the CIA for what he claims is excessive censorship of his book. (Baxter 8/14/2005; MSNBC 12/29/2005)
Bin Laden gave a speech in front of about 1,000 supporters on November 10, 2001 in the town of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (Smucker 3/4/2002) On the night of November 13, a convoy of 1,000 or more al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters escapes from Jalalabad and reaches the fortress of Tora Bora after hours of driving and then walking. Bin Laden is believed to be with them, riding in one of "several hundred cars" in the convoy. The US bombs the nearby Jalalabad airport, but apparently does not attack the convoy. (Smucker 3/4/2002; Brown 10/20/2002) The Northern Alliance captures Jalalabad the next day. (Sydney Morning Herald 11/14/2001)
In a 2007 book, CIA Director George Tenet will reveal that the late 2001 Afghanistan war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is fought by only about 500 US fighters, plus their Afghan allies. He says the US force is made up of "110 CIA officers, 316 Special Forces personnel, and scores of Joint Special Operations Command raiders creating havoc behind enemy lines… ." (Tenet 2007, pp. 255) There are many other US forces in Afghanistan which are not used at the time. For instance, 1,200 Marines remain in a military base in Afghanistan and do not take part in combat (see Late October-Early December 2001).
Richard Blee, head of the Sunni Extremist Group at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and a former head of Alec Station, the CIA's bin Laden unit, is made chief of the CIA's new station in Kabul. Blee replaces Gary Berntsen, who had effectively led the CIA's war effort against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Berntsen is unhappy with being replaced, saying: "It felt as though someone had just thrown a bucket of cold water in my face. I couldn't believe they were doing this in the middle of the most important battle of the war." The battle of Tora Bora begins around this time and, although the US thinks it has Osama bin Laden cornered there, he somehow manages to escape (see November 16, 2001, November 26, 2001 and Early December 2001).
Replacement Decision Is Not Well Received - Berntsen's staff members are also unhappy with the decision, and slap their hands over their heads and groan when they find out about it. They tell Berntsen, "No disrespect to Rich, but when you leave, we leave." Berntsen will attribute Blee's selection to his closeness to CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt, and will also hint that Blee strongly desired the job. (Berntsen and Pezzullo 2005, pp. 296-7, 306) Berntsen pushed hard for US troops to be deployed to catch bin Laden (see Late October-Early December 2001), but it is not known whether Blee is in favor of using US troops or not. Blee will also instigate the transfer of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi from the FBI to Egypt shortly after arriving; this is the first such transfer of a major figure after 9/11 (see Shortly After December 19, 2001).
Blee's Replacement - Blee is apparently replaced as chief of the Sunni Extremist Group by someone known only as Hendrik V. (see (Between Summer and Winter 2001)). Hendrik V. will later be replaced by an official known as "Marty M." before March 2003. (Tenet 2007, pp. 232, 251) That is almost certainly Marty Martin, someone said to lead the search for bin Laden from 2002 to 2004 (see (Shortly After October 29, 2004)).
According to author Ron Suskind, on this date bin Laden makes a broadcast on his shortwave radio from somewhere within Tora Bora, Afghanistan. He praises his "most loyal fighters" still fighting in Tora Bora and says "forgive me" for drawing them into a defeat. He says the battle will continue "on new fronts." Then he leads a prayer and leaves Tora Bora. Suskind says, "With a small band, he escaped on horseback toward the north. The group, according to internal CIA reports, took a northerly route to the province of Nangarhar—past the Khyber Pass, and the city of Jalalabad—and into the province of Konar. That day and the next, much of the remaining al-Qaeda force of about 800 soldiers moved to the south toward Pakistan." (Suskind 2006, pp. 74-75 Sources: Ron Suskind) A radio had been captured by US allied forces some days earlier, allowing the US to listen in to bin Laden's communications (see Late October-Early December 2001). In another account, a professional guide and former Taliban official later claims to have led bin Laden and a group of about 30 at this time on a four day trip into Pakistan and then back into a different part of Afghanistan. (Nordland, Yousafzai, and Dehghanpisheh 8/11/2002) Still other accounts have bin Laden heading south into Pakistan at this time instead (see Mid-December 2001). An article in the British Daily Telegraph entitled "Bin Laden's voice heard on radio in Tora Bora" will appear the very next day, detailing some of these communications. (Wastell 12/16/2001)
A videotape obtained by the CIA shows bin Laden at the end of the Tora Bora battle. He is walking on a trail either in Afghanistan and heading toward Pakistan, or already in Pakistan. Bin Laden is seen instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie undetected at night. A US bomb explodes in the distance. Referring to where the bomb was dropped, he says, "We were there last night." The existence of this videotape will not be reported until late 2006. (Priest and Tyson 9/10/2006) In September 2005, the New York Times will report that, "On or about Dec. 16, 2001, according to American intelligence estimates, bin Laden left Tora Bora for the last time, accompanied by bodyguards and aides.… Bin Laden and his men are believed to have journeyed on horseback directly south toward Pakistan." (Weaver 9/11/2005) Other accounts have him heading north into other parts of Afghanistan around this time instead (see December 15, 2001).
The US State Department begins the "Future of Iraq" project aimed at developing plans for post-Saddam Iraq. The project eventually evolves into the collaborative effort of some 17 working groups involving more than 200 exiled Iraqi opposition figures and professionals including jurists, academics, engineers, scientists, and technical experts. These groups meet on numerous occasions over the next eight to ten months, preparing plans to address a wide range of issues. The 17 working groups include: Public Health and Humanitarian Needs; Water, Agriculture and the Environment; Public Finance and Accounts; Transitional Justice; Economy and Infrastructure; Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, and Migration Policy; Foreign and National Security Policy; Defense Institutions and Policy; Civil Society Capacity-Building; Public and Media Outreach; Economic and Infrastructure; Local Government; Anti-Corruption Measures; Oil and Energy; Education; Free Media; and Democratic Principles. (US Department of State 1/22/2002; Lake 6/5/2002; US Department of State 10/4/2002; US Department of State 10/11/2002; US Department of State 10/11/2002; Assyrian International News Agency 10/31/2002; Sideek 12/16/2002; Washington File 12/16/2002; US Department of State 12/19/2002; McIntosh 2/3/2003; Warikoo 2/10/2003; US Department of State 2/12/2003; US Department of State 4/23/2003 ; Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003; Whitelaw 11/25/2003)
Problems and Setbacks - The project suffers from a serious lack of interest and funds. In July, The Guardian reports: "Deep in the bowels of the US State Department, not far from the cafeteria, there is a small office identified only by a handwritten sign on the door reading: 'The Future of Iraq Project.'… [T]he understaffed and underfunded Future of Iraq Project has been spending more effort struggling with other government departments than plotting Saddam's downfall." (Borger 7/10/2002) More than a month after the invasion, several of the project's 17 working groups will still have not met. (Roberts 2008, pp. 126)
Achievements - The $5 million project ultimately produces 13 volumes of reports consisting of some 2,000 pages of what is described as varying quality. The New York Times will later report, "A review of the work shows a wide range of quality and industriousness." (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003) The newspaper cites several examples:
"[T]he transitional justice working group, made up of Iraqi judges, law professors, and legal experts… met four times and drafted more than 600 pages of proposed reforms in the Iraqi criminal code, civil code, nationality laws and military procedure." (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
"The group studying defense policy and institutions expected problems if the Iraqi Army was disbanded quickly.… The working group recommended that jobs be found for demobilized troops to avoid having them turn against allied forces." (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
"The democratic principles working group wrestled with myriad complicated issues from reinvigorating a dormant political system to forming special tribunals for trying war criminals to laying out principles of a new Iraqi bill of rights." (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
"The transparency and anticorruption working group warned that 'actions regarding anticorruption must start immediately; it cannot wait until the legal, legislative and executive systems are reformed.'" (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
"The economy and infrastructure working group warned of the deep investments needed to repair Iraq's water, electrical, and sewage systems." (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
"The free media working group noted the potential to use Iraq's television and radio capabilities to promote the goals of a post-Hussein Iraq." (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
Impact of the Project's Work - After the US and British invasion of Iraq, Knight Ridder will report, "Virtually none of the 'Future of Iraq' project's work was used." (Landay and Strobel 7/12/2003) It was "ignored by Pentagon officials," the New York Times will also observe. (Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003) Iraq expert and former CIA analyst Judith Yaphe, who is one of the American experts involved in the "Future of Iraq" project, will tell American Prospect magazine in May 2003: "[The Office of the Secretary of Defense] has no interest in what I do." She will also complain about how the Defense Department prevented the State Department from getting involved in the post-war administration of Iraq. "They've brought in their own stable of people from AEI [American Enterprise Institute], and the people at the State Department who worked with the Iraqi exiles are being kept from [Jay] Garner," she will explain. (Dreyfuss 5/1/2003) One of those people is Tom Warrick, the "Future of Iraq" project director. When retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the first US administrator in Iraq, requests that Warrick join his staff, Pentagon civilians veto the appointment. (Landay and Strobel 7/12/2003; Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003) Other sources will also say that the Pentagon purposefully ignored the work of the "Future of Iraq" project. Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who retires from the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau on July 1, will tell Knight Ridder Newspapers that she and her colleagues were instructed by Pentagon officials in the Office of Special Plans to ignore the State Department's concerns and views. "We almost disemboweled State," Kwiatkowski will recall. (Landay and Strobel 7/12/2003) After the fall of Saddam Hussein, critics will say that several of the post-war problems encountered could have been avoided had the Pentagon considered the warnings and recommendations of the "Future of Iraq" project. (Dreyfuss 5/1/2003; Schmitt and Brinkley 10/19/2003)
Defense Intelligence Agency analysts issue a "fabricator notice," warning the intelligence community that the agency has determined (see Between February 12, 2002 and March 31, 2002) that Iraqi defector Mohammad Harith is of questionable reliability and recommending that agencies disregard any intelligence that he has provided. It also notes that Harith had been "coached by [the] Iraqi National Congress" on what to tell US interrogators. (Jehl 2/13/2004; Hosenball and Barry 2/16/2004; Landay and Strobel 7/16/2004 Sources: Unnamed US intelligence official) The classified memo is "widely circulated within intelligence agencies, including the DIA and CIA," Newsweek will later report, citing unnamed intelligence officials. (Hosenball and Barry 2/16/2004 Sources: Unnamed US Intelligence Officials, Linton Wells) Almost a year later, in a presentation to the UN, Secretary of State Colin Powell will make the claim that Iraq has mobile biological weapons labs (see February 5, 2003), and cite Harith as one of US Intelligence's four sources. Explaining how the reference to a dubious source made its way into Powell's speech, the State Department will say that the "fabricator notice" had not been properly cross-referenced in intelligence computers. (Hosenball and Barry 2/16/2004)
Current and former top US military brass dispute White House claims that Iraq poses an immediate threat to the US and that it must be dealt with militarily. In late July 2002, Washington Post reports that "top generals and admirals in the military establishment, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" believe that Saddam Hussein's regime "poses no immediate threat and that the United States should continue its policy of containment rather than invade Iraq to force a change of leadership in Baghdad." The report says that the military officials' positions are based "in part on intelligence assessments of the state of Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and his missile delivery capabilities." The newspaper says that there are several reasons why these dissident officers disagree with their civilian bosses. They worry that if Saddam Hussein is removed, Iraq could "split up,… potentially leading to chaos and the creation of new anti-American regimes and terrorist sanctuaries in the region." It is also possible, they say, that an invasion of Iraq could provoke Saddam Hussein into using whatever weapons of mass destruction he may have. And even if the invasion is successful, the aftermath could see "mass instability, requiring tens of thousands of US troops to maintain peace, prop up a post-Saddam government, and prevent the fragmentation of Iraq," the military brass warns. Their position is that the US should continue its policy of containment, specifically sanctions and the enforcement of the US- and British-imposed "no-fly" zones. (Ricks 7/28/2002)
Perle: Generals Not Competent to Judge - Responding to the dissenting opinions of these military officials, Richard Perle, current chairman of the Defense Policy Board, says that the decision of whether or not to attack Iraq is "a political judgment that these guys aren't competent to make." (Ricks 7/28/2002)
'Unusual Alliance' Between State, Pentagon Generals - A few days later, Washington Post publishes another story along similar lines, reporting, "Much of the senior uniformed military, with the notable exception of some top Air Force and Marine generals, opposes going to war anytime soon, a stance that is provoking frustration among civilian officials in the Pentagon and in the White House." Notably the division has created "an unusual alliance between the State Department and the uniformed side of the Pentagon, elements of the government that more often seem to oppose each other in foreign policy debates." (Ricks 8/1/2002) The extent of the generals' disagreement is quite significant, reports the Post, which quotes one proponent of invading Iraq expressing his/her concern that the brass' opinion could ultimately dissuade Bush from taking military action. "You can't force things onto people who don't want to do it, and the three- and four-star Army generals don't want to do it. I think this will go back and forth, and back and forth, until it's time for Bush to run for reelection," the source says. (Ricks 8/1/2002) During the next several months, several former military officials speak out against the Bush administration's military plans, including Wesley Clark, Joseph P. Hoar, John M. Shalikashvili, Tony McPeak, Gen James L Jones, Norman Schwarzkopf, Anthony Zinni, Henry H. Shelton and Thomas G. McInerney. In mid-January 2003, Time magazine reports that according to its sources, "as many as 1 in 3 senior officers questions the wisdom of a preemptive war with Iraq." They complain that "the US military is already stretched across the globe, the war against Osama bin Laden is unfinished, and… a long postwar occupation looks inevitable." (Thompson and Duffy 1/19/2003)
A briefing given to a top Pentagon advisory group by RAND Corp. analyst Laurent Murawiec states: "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader.… Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies." Saudi Arabia is called "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent." This position still runs counter to official US policy, but the Washington Post says it "represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration." The briefing suggests that the Saudis be given an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of their oil fields and financial assets invested in the United States. The advisory group, the Defense Policy Board, is headed by Richard Perle. (Ricks 8/6/2002) An international controversy follows the public reports of the briefing in August 2002 (for instance, (Scotsman 8/12/2002) ). In an abrupt change, the media starts calling the Saudis enemies, not allies, of the US. Slate reports details of the briefing the Post failed to mention. The briefing states, "There is an 'Arabia,' but it needs not be 'Saudi.'" The conclusion of the briefing: "Grand strategy for the Middle East: Iraq is the tactical pivot. Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot. Egypt the prize." (Shafer 8/7/2002) Note that a similar meeting of the Defense Policy Board appears to have preceded and affected the United States' decision to take a warlike stance against Iraq (see September 19-20, 2001). Murawiec is later identified as a former editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine controlled by Lyndon LaRouche, an infamous far-right conspiracy theorist and convicted felon. Perle invited Murawiec to make his presentation. (Hersh 3/17/2003)
Military planners in the US's Central Command (CENTCOM) finalize their plans for invading Iraq. "[T]he end state for this operation is regime change [with] an acceptable provisional/permanent government in place," the plans read. However, the plans do not tell how the goal of an acceptable, permanent government will be achieved. They do not even address what US troops should do once they reach Baghdad. Public policy professor Alasdair Roberts will later write that there are what he will call two main reasons for "CENTCOM's neglect." One, "occupation and reconstruction [are] not a core function for the military" (see May 14, 2004). The military has no real component for performing such tasks, and most military commanders have little interest in the subject, Roberts will write. Two, other government agencies, most notably the State Department, have responsibility for this subject. CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks tells subordinates that once Saddam Hussein is overthrown, the State Department will take the lead in directing the occupation and reconstruction. (Roberts 2008, pp. 125)
Dismayed at the lack of post-invasion planning in the Defense Department (see August 2002), the Joint Chiefs of Staff advance their own proposal for a military command to govern Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insists on a split between military and civilian functions; he places Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith in charge of planning for the civilian administration. Feith, whom CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks calls "the dumbest f_cking guy on the planet," is an academic with no experience at administration on such a level, and will be roundly excoriated for his incompetence in handling the assignment. Author and public administration professor Alasdair Roberts will later write that beyond Feith's lack of competence is a bureaucratic failure: the Pentagon "was simply reaching beyond its abilities." A RAND report will later find the Defense Department "lacked experience, expertise, funding authority, local knowledge, and established contacts with other potential civilian organizations" to do the task it had set for itself. Roberts will write that the Pentagon will substitute improvisation for meticulous planning (see January 2003). (Roberts 2008, pp. 126, 134)
The CIA's associate deputy director for intelligence (ADDI) receives draft seven of President Bush's upcoming speech in Cincinnati and sees that the speechwriters have failed to remove the passage on Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium from Niger, as the CIA had advised the day before (see October 5, 2002). The revised passage reads in part, "the regime has been caught attempting to purchase a substantial amount of uranium oxide from sources in Africa." The ADDI contacts Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and tells him that the "president should not be a fact witness on this issue" because the agency's analysts consider the reporting "weak" and say it is based solely on one source. Tenet then personally calls White House officials, including Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, with the CIA's concerns. The allegation is finally removed from the speech. Later in the day, to press its point even further, the CIA faxes another memo, summarizing its position on the Africa-uranium claim. The memo states: "[M]ore on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British." (Pincus and Allen 7/13/2003; Milbank and Pincus 7/23/2003; US Congress 7/7/2004; Unger 2007, pp. 261-262) The memo's recipients include National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Hadley. (Milbank and Pincus 7/23/2003) Bush will not use the reference in his speech—although he does repeat the "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" trope (see September 4, 2002)—but the administration's neoconservatives, such as Hadley, are not through with the issue. They will continue trying to insert the language into other speeches (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Larry Wilkerson, the chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, will later say: "That was their favorite technique. Stick that baby in there 47 times and on the 47th time it would stay. I'm serious. It was interesting to watch them do this. At every level of the decision-making process you had to have your axe out, ready to chop their fingers off. Sooner or later you would miss one and it would get in there." (Unger 2007, pp. 261-262)
In a speech during the Middle East Institute's annual conference, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni presents an extensive argument against the Bush administration's plans for invading Iraq. He makes several salient points. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
In order for the planned military operation against Iraq to be successful it must have international support. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
In order to ensure a quick war, the US must use overwhelming force. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
Civilian casualties, collateral damage, and destruction of the infrastructure must be kept to a minimum. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
Israeli involvement would create massive instability. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
The invasion must not provoke a reaction from the Arab world. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
The transition to a post-Saddam Iraq will not be easy. He explains: "If we think there is a fast solution to changing the governance of Iraq, then we don't understand history, the nature of the country, the divisions, or the underneath-suppressed passions that could rise up. God help us if we think this transition will occur easily." (Zinni 10/10/2002)
The burden of the war and post-war reconstruction must be shared. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
It will not be possible to simply impose a democracy on Iraq. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
Anti-American militant groups cannot be defeated by military means alone. He asks several questions that are rarely asked in public: "Why are young people flocking to these causes? Could the issues be political, economic and social? Could disenfranchisement or oppression be what drives them rather than the religious fanaticism that may be the core element to only a few? How do we cooperate to fix these problems? How do we help a part of the world that's trying to come to grips with modernity?" (Zinni 10/10/2002)
He questions whether an invasion is even necessary, instead suggesting that there are numerous other issues to deal with of higher priority. (Zinni 10/10/2002)
Finally, he says that violence and war are not the solution. "Like those generals who were far greater than I am, I don't think that violence and war is the solution. There are times when you reluctantly, as a last resort, have to go to war. But as a general that has seen war,… I will tell you that in my time, I never saw anything come out of fighting that was worth the fight." (Zinni 10/10/2002)
Former Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the push for war with Iraq (see October 10, 2002), says that he "bristle[s] against ideas of small forces" in any possible invasion of Iraq, directly contradicting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's constant exhortation to "do it smaller." The US will need to maintain order in Iraq during a lengthy and fractious period of transition to self-rule, Zinni warns, and to do that properly will require a large number of troops. (Roberts 2008, pp. 141) Zinni publicly spoke out against the invasion earlier in the month (see October 10, 2002).
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, writes to the State Department and White House to warn senior Bush administration officials that he believes the Iraq-Niger documents are forgeries (see January 12, 2003 and February 17, 2003) and should not be cited as evidence that Iraq is pursuing WMD (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). ElBaradei will later say he never received a reply despite repeated follow-up calls to the White House, the State Department, and the National Security Council. State Department officials will later say they do not know if Secretary of State Colin Powell ever saw the letter. (Leopold 1/27/2006)
CIA Director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin meet in the White House with President George Bush and Bush's top advisers for a "dress rehearsal" ahead of a public presentation that will accuse Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction. Bush is disappointed with Tenet and McLauglin's presentation, which is based on communications intercepts, satellite photos, diagrams, and other intelligence. "Nice try," one official will later recall Bush saying. "I don't think this quite—it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from." Bush reportedly says to Tenet. "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD, and this is the best we've got?" According to a White House leak to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Tenet responds, "It's a slam dunk case," Bush then reportedly asks, "George, how confident are you?" To which the intelligence head responds, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk." (Hamilton 4/17/2004; Ford 6/20/2006 Sources: Carl W. Ford, Jr.) But this account is later disputed by Tenet. According to Tenet, he told the president that he could provide more intelligence to strengthen the public case. It would be easy—"a slam dunk." (Tenet 2007, pp. 359-367; CBS News 4/29/2007)
The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) is created by the Pentagon to direct the post-war administration of Iraq, and signed into existence by President Bush. Its head, retired Army General Jay Garner, ostensibly reports to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith (see Fall 2002), but Garner will later say that once he is in Iraq proper, General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) "will be my boss." ORHA is later renamed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). David Kay, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and a former UN weapons inspector, had initially been selected to head the office, but he declined the invitation. Associates of Kay tell the New York Times that Kay felt the new agency seemed relatively uninterested in the task of promoting democracy. (Miller 2/23/2003; Perlez 4/2/2003; Roberts 2008, pp. 126, 134) Garner is considered an excellent selection, having led the relief effort for the Kurds of northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. But he faces an uphill battle, as ORHA's functionality is plagued from the outset by a severe lack of time, uncertain funding, and incessant interdepartmental strife, particularly between the State and Defense Departments. Most ORHA workers will not have reported for duty by the time the invasion begins. And attempts to recruit experts from other agencies will be blocked by Feith and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who impose strict ideological and bureaucratic restrictions on Garner's selections for his staff. (Roberts 2008, pp. 126, 134)
Embarrassed and angered by CIA Director George Tenet's refusal to support the use of the Iraq-Niger uranium claim in President Bush's upcoming State of the Union speech (see October 5, 2002, October 6, 2002, January 27, 2003, and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), the White House decides to go behind Tenet's back to get CIA approval for publicly citing the claim in the speech. Robert Joseph, director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council (NSC), telephones Alan Foley, director of the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), and mentions plans to include the Africa-uranium claim in Bush's upcoming State of the Union address. When Foley warns that the allegation has little evidence to support it, Joseph instead suggests including a statement about the British learning that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa, leaving out the bit about Niger and the exact quantity of uranium that was allegedly sought. (Pincus and Priest 7/17/2003; Risen and Sanger 7/17/2003; Carney and Duffy 7/21/2003; Milbank and Allen 7/27/2003; Unger 2007, pp. 273-274) Foley apparently has no qualms about putting his bureau's stamp of approval on the claim, having already told his staff, "If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so." Foley rationalizes that if Bush attributes the claim to British intelligence, he can make it without having to worry whether it is actually true. The fact that the CIA has repeatedly labeled the British reports as untrustworthy does not stop Foley from vetting the claim. (Unger 2007, pp. 273-274) Joseph will claim he does not recall the discussion, and White House communications director Dan Bartlett will call Foley's version of events a "conspiracy theory." (Milbank and Allen 7/27/2003)
The CIA's Berlin station chief warns CIA headquarters that information on the alleged mobile biological units supplied by Iraqi defector "Curveball" should be used with extreme caution. The station chief explains that the German intelligence service does not consider Curveball a reliable source and that it has been unable to confirm the defector's statements. "[T]o use information from another liaison service's source whose information cannot be verified on such an important, key topic should take the most serious consideration," the station chief writes. (The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka 'Robb-Silberman Commission') 3/31/2005; Pincus 5/21/2005) This information is forwarded by Tyler Drumheller to CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin. But WINPAC analysts assure McLaughlin that the reporting is solid enough to be in Powell's upcoming speech to the UN. (Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 182-183; Warrick 6/25/2006; Unger 2007, pp. 268-269)
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who went to Niger almost a year ago to determine the truth or falsehood of the story that Iraq attempted to secure 500 tons of uranium from Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), and his wife, CIA case officer and WMD specialist Valerie Plame Wilson, both watch President Bush's State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). According to Plame Wilson's 2007 book Fair Game, Wilson watches from a Canadian television studio, brought there to comment on the address immediately afterwards. His wife watches from their Washington, DC, home. Plame Wilson will recall being dumbstruck at Bush's "16 words" claim that British intelligence had found a clandestine attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from an African nation. She will write: "What? Had I heard him correctly? Hadn't Joe's report on his trip to Niger nearly a year ago (see March 4-5, 2002 and March 5, 2002), distributed throughout the intelligence community, including presumably the vice president's office, proved the emptiness of these charges?" When Wilson returns home, he and his wife, according to Plame Wilson's recollection, "briefly discussed what we thought the president's claim could have meant. It seemed so odd." The next day, Wilson asks a friend at the State Department about the claim, and notes that Bush's assertion is not borne out by the facts. If Bush had indeed referred to Niger in the speech, then his report, along with those of the US Ambassador to Niger and General Carlton Fulford (see February 24, 2002), "had all been wrong. Or had the president misspoken? In that case, the record needed to be corrected." Wilson's friend replies that Bush may have been speaking of one of the other African countries that produce uranium—Gabon, South Africa, or Namibia. Wilson accepts the explanation for the time being. As a side note, Plame Wilson adds at this point in her book, "Several years later, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs told Joe, 'You don't think that if we had seen the State of the Union address before it was delivered, that we would have allowed that phrase to remain in it, do you?" (Wilson, 7/6/2003; Wilson 2004, pp. 313-314; Wilson 2007, pp. 125-126)
President Bush gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, making several false allegations about Iraq. (US President 2/3/2003) An empty seat is left open to symbolize the lives lost during the 9/11 attacks. Author Craig Unger will later characterize Bush's delivery as somber and effective. He will be interrupted some 70 times by thunderous applause from the assembled lawmakers in the House chambers. One of his biggest applause lines is his statement about the US's war on "international terrorism:" "The war goes on, and we are winning." (Unger 2007, pp. 269-270)
African Uranium - He says: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities.… He clearly has much to hide." (US President 2/3/2003; White House 4/18/2003; Grice and Usborne 6/5/2003) The British allegation cited by Bush concerns a SISMI (Italy's military intelligence) report (see Mid-October 2001) based on a set of forged documents. Months after the speech, with evidence mounting that the statement was completely false, the administration will retract this claim (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003).
Aluminum Tubes - Bush alleges that a shipment of aluminum tubes imported by Iraq was intended to be used in the country's alleged nuclear weapons program. "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide." (US President 2/3/2003)
Biological Agents - Bush lists a parade of agents: "anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague," many of which Iraq has never been accused of possessing, and warns against "outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and builogical weapons… blackmail, terror, and mass murder." He then moves from the general to the specific, accusing Iraq of having enough material "to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax—enough doses to kill several million people… more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin—enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure… as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." (US President 2/3/2003; Unger 2007, pp. 270-271)
False Testimony from Iraqi Scientists - Bush alleges: "Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say." (US President 2/3/2003) But Hans Blix, the chief UNMOVIC weapons inspector, tells the New York Times in an interview that he knows of no evidence supporting this claim. (Miller and Preston 1/31/2003)
Defector Allegations - Bush, citing intelligence provided by "three Iraqi defectors," says, "We know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile weapons labs… designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors." One of the defectors referred to by Bush is 'Curveball,' whom the CIA station chief in Germany warned was not reliable the day before (see January 27, 2003). German intelligence officials watching Bush's speech are "shocked." One official later recalls: "Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven.… It was not hard intelligence." (Drogin and Goetz 11/20/2005) Another source for the claim was Mohammad Harith, whom the Defense Intelligence Agency had labeled a "fabricator" the previous May (see May 2002).
Torture, Murder, and 9/11 - Bush accuses Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein of routinely torturing his own people, using such techniques as "electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape." He then connects Hussein, the torturer, murderer, and terrorist supporter, to the 9/11 attacks, saying: "[I]magine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known." He invites "all free nations" to join him in ensuring no such attack ever happens, but notes that "the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others." After another long burst of applause, Bush continues, "Whatever action is required, whatever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people." (Unger 2007, pp. 270-271)
'Direct Personal Threat' - Bush states what former ambassador Joseph Wilson later writes can only be interpreted by Hussein "as a direct personal threat," saying: "Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation." Wilson will later write: "Not simply promising the disarmament of Iraq as he had in his recent speeches, the president now stated outright his intention to rout Saddam from power, and to kill or capture him. It was an unwise thing to say. It made whatever strategy we adopted for Iraq that much more dangerous because it so blatantly telegraphed our next move and our ultimate goal." (US President 2/3/2003; Wilson 2004, pp. 315)
Defending America - To America's soldiers, he says: "Many of you are assembling in or near the Middle East, and some crucial hours lay ahead. In these hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you." In 2007, Unger will write: "A few years earlier, Bush had confided that he thought to be a great president meant being a great commander in chief. Now George W. Bush was leading his nation into war." (Unger 2007, pp. 270-271)
French officials are shocked by the claims Bush made in his state of the union speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) concerning Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Africa. One government official will later recall in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that French experts considered Bush's claim, which he attributed to the British, as "totally crazy because, in our view, there was no backup for this." Notwithstanding, the French launch another investigation (see Late April or Early May 2002-June 2002) and again, find no evidence supporting the US and British claim. (Hamburger, Wallsten, and Drogin 12/11/2005)
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson attempts to contact the White House through his contacts in the State Department and Senate with the message that it needs to correct the record on Iraq, specifically the allegation Bush recently made that Iraq sought uranium from Africa (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Wilson had been sent to Niger nearly a year before by the CIA to investigate these claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Both he and the current US ambassador in Niger confirmed that the country's uranium supplies were under the complete control of a French consortium and that it would have been impossible for Niger to divert uranium to Iraq. Wilson also tells his contacts about General Carlton W. Fulford Jr's trip (see February 24, 2002) to Niger. On that trip the four-star Marine Corps general had similarly reported to Washington that the purported uranium deal was probably not true. (Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 174) The White House refuses to communicate with Wilson. The only message he receives is one from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice saying that he can state his case in writing in a public forum. (Leopold 1/23/2007)
General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" will be needed to secure post-invasion Iraq. "We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground-force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this." (Associated Press 3/25/2003; Shanker 1/12/2007) For his estimate, Shinseki will be publicly derided by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz (see February 27, 2003). (Murphy and Purdum 2/2009)
Appearing before the House Budget Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly contradicts General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, for saying that it will take "several hundred thousand soldiers" to successfully occupy Iraq (see February 25, 2003).
Greeted as Liberators - Wolfowitz says: "We can't be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators, although based on what Iraqi-Americans told me in Detroit a week ago, many of them—most of them with families in Iraq—I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down. In short, we don't know what the requirement will be, but we can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark." Wolfowitz says there's no "record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another." (CNN 2/28/2003; Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 194) He restates the opinions of the top civilians at the Pentagon that it will take somewhere around 100,000 troops to secure postwar Iraq. Wolfowitz's statement is echoed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who says, "The idea that it would take several hundred thousand US forces I think is far off the mark." Neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz mention Shinseki by name, but the connection is clear. A spokesman for Shinseki, Colonel Joe Curtin, says that Shinseki stands by his judgment. "He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgment," says Curtin. (Schmitt 2/28/2003) Shinseki will retire shortly after the contretemps with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (see June 13, 2003).
Iraqi Reconstruction Chief's Opinion - Reflecting on Shinseki's public humilation, Iraqi reconstruction chief Jay Garner (see January 2003) will say, "When Shinseki said, Hey, it's going to take 300,000 or 400,000 soldiers, they crucified him. They called me up the day after that, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. They called me the next day and they said, Did you see what Shinseki said? And I said yes. And they said, Well, that can't be possible. And I said, Well, let me give you the only piece of empirical data I have. In 1991 [during the Gulf War], I owned 5 percent of the real estate in Iraq, and I had 22,000 trigger pullers. And on any day I never had enough. So you can take 5 percent—you can take 22,000 and multiply that by 20. Hey, here's probably the ballpark, and I didn't have Baghdad. And they said, Thank you very much. So I got up and left." Garner's estimate would require some 440,000 troops in Iraq. (Murphy and Purdum 2/2009)
After the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that the Niger documents (see March 2000) are not authentic (see March 7, 2003), the US and British governments stand behind their claim that Iraq had sought uranium from an African country. The two countries maintain that they have additional evidence—from multiple sources—but do not elaborate. Pressed by journalists and inspectors to reveal their evidence, the two governments refuse. The IAEA tells Reuters that when it asked the US and Britain whether or not they have additional evidence that Iraq had tried to procure uranium, the answer was "no." (Charbonneau 3/26/2003)
'Information Blackout' - Additionally, an informed UN official tells the Washington Post that the US and Britain were repeatedly asked for more information. Neither government, the official explains, "ever indicated that they had any information on any other country." (Priest and DeYoung 3/22/2003) An unnamed Western diplomat tells the Independent: "Despite requests, the British Government has provided no such evidence. Senior officials at the agency think it is involved in an information black-out." (Independent 7/17/2003)
British Stick With Story Even after US Backs Away - The British will hold to their story even after top US officials admit (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003) that Bush should not have included the claim in his State of the Union speech.(see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) (Sanger 7/8/2003; Whitaker and Lashmar 7/20/2003)
Additional Evidence Initially Believed to be French Intel Reports - The London Times will later suggest that Britain's additional evidence consisted of reports provided by the French in 1999 alleging that Iraqi diplomat Wissam al-Zahawie's visit to Niger (see February 1999) was aimed at securing a deal to purchase uranium. (Smith 11/6/2005) As one British foreign official explains to the Independent: "Niger has two main exports—uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens." But Al-Zahawie disputes this. "My only mission was to meet the president of Niger and invite him to visit Iraq," he tells the Independent. "The invitation and the situation in Iraq resulting from the genocidal UN sanctions were all we talked about. I had no other instructions, and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium…. I have been cleared by everyone else, including the US and the United Nations. I am surprised to hear there are still question marks over me in Britain. I am willing to cooperate with anyone who wants to see me and find out more." (Whitaker 8/10/2003; Hersh 10/27/2003)
Actual Evidence Provided by Italian Reports Based on Forged Documents - Later reporting will reveal that the main source for Britain's Africa-uranium allegation was in fact an Italian intelligence report (see Mid-October 2001) that traced back to the forged Niger documents. (Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/24/2005; Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/25/2005) "I understand that it concerned the same group of documents and the same transaction," an unnamed Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency later tells the Daily Mail. (Agence France-Presse 7/15/2003)
A day after former ambassador Joseph Wilson appears on CNN questioning the validity of the administration's claims about the Iraq-Niger uranium purchase (see March 8, 2003), Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley begin a campaign to discredit him. The information comes from senior sources within the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council (NSC), all with direct knowledge of the campaign, and from Wilson himself. The sources will say that they and other officials are directed to unearth or "invent" embarrassing information on Wilson that could be used against him in public. Aides in the Office of the Vice President and others, including the sources, prepare a "workup" on Wilson, including memos and classified material on him for Cheney and the NSC. Officials meet regularly in Cheney's office to discuss the progress of the campaign with Cheney, Hadley, and other officials.
Visit to CIA Headquarters - According to an official in the CIA's Counterproliferation Division (CPD), Cheney and Hadley visit the CIA the day after Wilson's interview on CNN. Cheney's original target for discrediting was not Wilson, but David Albright, the former UN weapons inspector who has also challenged the credibility of the Iraq-Niger claims and the rationale for invading Iraq (see March 8, 2003). Cheney asked several CIA officials to find "dirt" on Albright for use in discrediting him in the media. At the outset, the CIA official will say: "Vice President Cheney was more concerned with Mr. Albright. The international community had been saying that inspectors should have more time, that the US should not set a deadline. The vice president felt Mr. Albright's remarks would fuel the debate." The CIA will eventually send a "binder" to Cheney's office containing information about Albright; it is not clear to what, if any, use that information is put.
Cheney 'Enraged' - But Wilson's appearance on CNN and his public ridicule of the Iraq-Niger uranium claim enraged Cheney, who saw Wilson's comments as a personal attack against him. Hadley also took an interest in Wilson's remarks because he personally allowed the Iraq-Niger claim to remain in Bush's State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) even after being informed that the documents the claim was based upon were forgeries. Both Cheney and Hadley view Wilson as a possible impediment to the public's acceptance of the impending Iraq invasion. Cheney chairs a meeting in his office the day after Wilson's appearance on CNN, attended by, among others, Hadley, White House political guru Karl Rove, Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's deputy national security adviser John Hannah, and several officials from the CIA and State Department, including the officials who will later discuss the matter with the press. "The way I remember it," says the CIA official, "is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an '_sshole,' a son-of-a-b_tch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress." Hadley says he will write an editorial about the Iraqi threat that should offset Wilson's remarks; the State Department will redistribute a February 16, 2003 editorial by Hadley that appeared in the Chicago Tribune to newspaper editors around the country. Cheney will appear on NBC's Meet the Press to refute the challenges to the Iraq-Niger claims (see March 16, 2003). (Leopold 2/9/2006) In 2004, Wilson will write: "I learned that a meeting right around the time of this particular CNN appearance (see March 8, 2003) led to the decision to produce a 'workup' on me for the Office of the Vice President. It was not made clear to me whether Dick Cheney himself attended this meeting, although I was told that senior members of his staff and quite possibly other senior Republicans, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, were present and that Gingrich actively participated in a strategy session, the objective of which was to figure out how to discredit me." (Wilson 2004, pp. 326-327)
False Allegations of 'Womanizing,' Drug Use - Within days, officials in the CIA, NSC, and State Department pass on information to Cheney and Libby that purportedly shows Wilson is a "womanizer" who had occassionally used drugs in his youth; the sources later say that the allegations are entirely false. The sources will say that they are unsure the material was ever used to discredit Wilson, since after the war began on March 19, the media lost interest in Wilson's warnings. (Leopold 2/9/2006) Wilson later writes that the meeting about him does "not include discussion of how the president and his senior staff might address the indisputable, if inconvenient, fact that the allegation I had made was true. In other words, from the very beginning, the strategy of the White House was to confront the issue as a 'Wilson' problem rather than as an issue of the lie that was in the State of the Union address.… The immediate effect of the workup, I am told by a member of the press, citing White House sources, was a long harangue against the two of us within the White House walls. Over a period of several months, Libby evidently seized opportunities to rail openly against me as an 'assh_le playboy' who went on a boondoggle 'arranged by his CIA wife'—and was a Democratic Gore supporter to boot." (Wilson 2004, pp. 441-442)
New Interest in Wilson - Cheney's interest in Wilson will be renewed in May 2003 (see May 2003), when Wilson informs New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that he was the special envoy who had gone to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the uranium claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002).
General Jay Garner, the head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA—see January 2003), admits to reporters, "We started very slowly" in preparing for handling the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq. (Roberts 2008, pp. 126)
Garner Knew Problems Would Arise - Garner will later say: "When I went to see [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld at the end of January [2003], I said, OK, I'll do this for the next few months for you. I said, you know, Let me tell you something, Mr. Secretary. George Marshall started in 1942 working on a 1945 problem. You're starting in February working on what's probably a March or April problem. And he said, I know, but we have to do the best with the time that we have. So that kind of frames everything."
'Never Recovered' - Sir Jeremy Greenstock, currently Britain's special representative to Iraq, will add: "The administration of Iraq never recovered [from the failure to plan]. It was a vacuum in security that became irremediable, at least until the surge of 2007. And to that extent, four years were not only wasted but allowed to take on the most terrible cost because of that lack of planning, lack of resources put in on the ground. And I see that lack of planning as residing in the responsibility of the Pentagon, which had taken charge, the office of the secretary of defense, with the authority of the vice president and the president, obviously, standing over that department of government." (Murphy and Purdum 2/2009)
US broadcast and cable news outlets begin covering the first US strikes against Iraqi targets (see March 19, 2003 and March 19-20, 2003), but, as author and media critic Frank Rich will later note, their coverage often lacks accuracy. News broadcasts report "a decapitation strike" (see March 20, 2003) that lead US viewers to believe for hours that Saddam Hussein has been killed. CNN's title card for its strike coverage reads, "Zero Hour for Iraq Arrives"; during its initial coverage, CNN features New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who credits "a slew of information from defectors" and other "intelligence sources"—those who had provided the foundation for Secretary of State Colin Powell's "impressive speech to the United Nations" (see February 5, 2003)—with the imminent discovery and destruction of Iraq's WMD stockpiles. "One person in Washington told me that the list could total more than 1,400 of those sites," Miller says. Pentagon PR chief Victoria Clarke, who had created both the Pentagon's "embed program" of reporters going into battle with selected military units (see February 2003) and the "military analysts" program of sending carefully selected retired flag officers to the press and television news programs to give the administration's views of the war (see Early 2002 and Beyond), has overseen the construction of a briefing room for press conferences from US CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar: the $200,000 facility was designed by a production designer who had worked for, among others, Disney, MGM, and illusionist David Blaine. Clarke and the Pentagon marketing officials succeed in having their term to describe the initial assault, "shock and awe," promulgated throughout the broadcast and cable coverage. (Fox and MSNBC will soon oblige the Pentagon by changing the name of their Iraqi coverage programming to the official administration name for the invasion, "Operation Iraqi Freedom.") During the assault, as Rich will later write, "the pyrotechnics of Shock and Awe looked like a distant fireworks display, or perhaps the cool computer graphics of a Matrix-inspired video game, rather than the bombing of a large city. None of Baghdad's nearly six million people were visible." Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon later says, "If you had hired actors [instead of the network news anchors], you could not have gotten better coverage." (Rich 2006, pp. 73-75)
As the initial media exuberance over the "shock and awe" assault on Iraq (see March 19-20, 2003) begins to fade, questions begin to mount about the plans for rebuilding Iraq after the invasion and inevitable toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime. Bush administration officials had assumed that military operations would end in 30 days, according to White House briefings. Some senior administration officials admit to the New York Times that that assumption now seems "overly optimistic." As reported by David Sanger, those officials "say that the American military will likely need to retain tight control over the country for longer than they anticipated." But administration officials insist that they remain committed to giving over control of the country to the newly liberated Iraqis very soon. "The Iraqi people will administer Iraq," says White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, adding that President Bush is as committed to that goal now as he was before the war began. However, some military officials now admit that the Iraqi resistance is far stiffer than had been anticipated, and the reception of American occupiers by the Iraqi people has been far less welcoming than US planners foresaw. The White House says that initial plans for an "Iraqi Interim Authority" as the genesis of a new Iraqi government have been put on hold until Baghdad can be secured and the remnants of the Hussein regime can be eliminated. Similarly, plans to turn over power to local Iraqi governance have also been delayed indefinitely, until cities like Basra can be purged of guerrilla resistance. "There were many of us who hoped to be creating a new government even before Iraq was fully under coalition control," says one senior official. The White House intended to demonstrate quickly that "this is a liberation, not an occupation." Now, "[t]hat may not be possible for some weeks." To make matters more difficult, turf wars between the State Department and the Pentagon are inhibiting efforts to implement post-invasion plans, with Defense Department officials such as Douglas Feith blocking the hiring of outside experts for General Jay Garner's reconstruction team (see January 2003). State officials say that Feith and other Pentagon ideologues want to place "like-minded former officials who have strong views about what a new Iraq should look like" in those slots, a charge which the Pentagon denies. (Sanger 4/2/2003)
US military Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Tommy Franks issues an order formally recognizing the creation of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA - see January 2003), an ad hoc, improvised organization to be headed by former diplomat and business executive L. Paul Bremer. A 2006 report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction will call the CPA the "de facto government of Iraq." But for all its power, its legal status will remain unclear throughout its existence. A 2005 Congressional report will note: "Whether the CPA was a federal agency was unclear. Competing explanations for how it was established contribute to the uncertainty.… Some executive branch documents supported the notion that it was created by the president, possibly as a result of a National Security Presidential Directive. This document, if it exists, has not been made available." Whether the legal ambiguity is deliberate is unclear, but it will be exploited. The Defense Department will not allow federal auditors to investigate CPA spending because, the department says, it is not a federal agency. Contractors are warned that if the CPA breaks contracts, they might not have recourse in federal courts. Employees who suspect contractor fraud are told they cannot pursue any possible criminal actions under American law. (Roberts 2008, pp. 127)
Retired General Jay Garner and his Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance staff arrive in Baghdad. They set up camp in a former presidential palace in the Qasr Al Fao compound that will serve as the temporary headquarters of ORHA (soon to be renamed the "Coalition Provisional Authority"). (Reel 4/22/2003) Created by the Pentagon in January (see January 2003), ORHA has spent the last several weeks at a Hilton resort in Kuwait going over plans for administering post-invasion Iraq. Garner's staff includes a mix of Pentagon and State Department personnel, including former and current US ambassadors, USAID bureaucrats, State Department officials, and British officials. Garner's team is also comprised of a cadre of Paul Wolfowitz protégés referred to as the "true believers" or "Wolfie's" people, whom the New York Times reports are "thought to be particularly fervent about trying to remake Iraq as a beacon of democracy and a country with a tilt toward Israel." The Times also notes: "Few of these people are Iraqi experts. But some have come armed with books and articles on the history of Iraq. The chapters on the mistakes of British rule are well underlined." (Perlez 4/2/2003) Not only have Garner and his agency already lost critical time in getting underway, the Bush administration has no intention of allowing Garner to be part of ORHA's reconstruction project. Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the State Department, in a rare instance of agreement, want Garner replaced: the State Department wants a civilian to head the agency, while Rumsfeld not only wants to replace Garner with a more politically influential head (see May 11, 2003), he wants to fold ORHA into another organization being created "on the fly," the aforementioned Coalition Provisional Authority. Three days after arriving in Baghdad, Garner is informed of the changes. The news quickly leaks to the press, resulting in Garner losing what little influence he had with Washington's civilians and causing uncertainty about upcoming reconstruction efforts. (Roberts 2008, pp. 126-127)
The White House announces its intention to appoint L. Paul Bremer III as special envoy and civil administrator for Iraq. Bremer, described by media reports as an expert on terrorism, is a former managing director of Kissinger Associates (1989 to 2000). (Hirsh 4/30/2003; Allen 5/2/2003)
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, citing unnamed sources, breaks the story of former US diplomat Joseph Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Kristof's source for the story is Wilson, who he recently met at a political conference in Washington that was sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee (see Early May 2003). The following morning, they met for breakfast, and Wilson recounted the details of his trip. Kristof writes in part: "I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former US ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.… In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong, and that the documents had been forged." (Kristof 5/6/2003; Burrough et al. 5/2004, pp. 282) In response to the column, Patrick Lang, the former head of the DIA's Middle Eastern affairs bureau, tells Kristof that the office of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had pressured the US intelligence community before the war, asking analysts "to think it over again" when they filed reports skeptical of Iraq's WMD programs. Lang also says that any intelligence warning "that Iraqis would not necessarily line up to cheer US troops, and that the Shi'ite clergy could be a problem," was also unwelcome at the Defense Department. (Rich 2006, pp. 97) In 2007, author Craig Unger will write: "Now the secret was out with regard to the Niger documents. Not only had the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] determined that they were forgeries (see February 17, 2003), but it was clear that the administration knew the Niger deal was phony even before Bush cited them in the State of the Union address" (see March 8, 2002 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). (Unger 2007, pp. 309) Wilson expects a certain amount of criticism and opprobrium from the White House and its allies in the media over the column, but as his wife, senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, will later write, "In retrospect, if anything, he underestimated the potential for those in the administration, and their allies, to change the subject from the lies in the president's address to lies about us." (Wilson 2007, pp. 108)
Jay Garner, a retired general selected by the Pentagon a month before to direct reconstruction efforts in Iraq, is replaced by diplomat Paul Bremer III as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Bremer is thought more capable of dealing with the increasing rebellion and lawlessness in Iraq. (CNN 5/11/2003)
L. Paul Bremer, US administrator for Iraq, issues Order 1, abolishing the Baath Party. The order, which permanently bans between 15,000 and 30,000 former Baath Party members from public office, marks the beginning of the controversial "De-Baathification" program. (Coalition Provisional Authority 5/16/2003 ; BBC 5/16/2003) The order was drafted by Douglas Feith's office in the Pentagon. (Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 224)
Paul Bremer, head of the Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, issues Order 2 formally dissolving the Iraqi Army and other vestiges of the old Ba'athist state. (Arraf 5/23/2003; Coalition Provisional Authority 5/23/2003) The order, drafted by Douglas Feith's office in the Pentagon and approved by the White House, triggers mass protests among the estimated 300,000 to 500,000 former Iraqi soldiers who are left without a job and who are given only a small, one-time, $20 emergency payment. (Lacey 5/24/2003; Agence France Presse 5/26/2003; Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 225) Together with the de-Ba'athification program, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army leads to some 500,000 people losing their source of income. (Vieth 6/5/2003)
Criticism - The action will be highly criticized as a major blunder of the war. The decision was made by Walter Slocombe, a security adviser to Bremer, who proclaims that "We don't pay armies we defeated." A colonel on Jay Garner's staff (see January 2003) will later say: "My Iraqi friends tell me that this decision was what really spurred the nationalists to join the infant insurgency. We had advertised ourselves as liberators and turned on these people without so much as a second thought." (Fallows 12/2005)
Garner's Reaction - Garner himself will later speak on the subject, telling a Vanity Fair reporter: "My plan was to not disband the Iraqi Army but to keep the majority of it and use them. And the reason for that is we needed them, because, number one, there were never enough people there for security. [A US military commander told him the US Army was guarding a lot of places it had not planned to guard.] So we said, OK, we'll bring the Army back. Our plan was to bring back about 250,000 of them. And I briefed [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld. He agreed. [Deputy Defense Secretary] Wolfowitz agreed. [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice agreed. [CIA Director] George [Tenet] agreed. Briefed the president on it. He agreed. Everybody agreed. So when that decision [to disband] was made, I was stunned."
Iraqi Colonel's Reaction - US and UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer will later say of the decision: "One Iraqi colonel told me, 'You know, our planning before the war was that we assumed that you guys couldn't take casualties, and that was obviously wrong.' I looked at him and said, 'What makes you think that was wrong?' He goes, 'Well, if you didn't want to take casualties, you would have never made that decision about the Army.'" (Murphy and Purdum 2/2009)
Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer (see May 1, 2003) meets with Iraqi Communications Minister Haider al-Abadi and Minister of Industry Mohamad Tofiq for the first time. Al-Abadi will later recall in an interview with journalist Naomi Klein that he told Bremer he would not support a policy of privatization. "I said, 'Look, we don't have the mandate to sell any of this. Privatization is a big thing. We have to wait until there is an Iraqi government.'" Tofiq likewise tells Bremer, "I am not going to do something that is not legal, so that's it." (Klein 9/24/2004)
President Bush visits US CENTCOM headquarters in Doha, Qatar. One of the pressing issues on his mind is the continued failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As Time magazine later recounts the visit, Bush, meeting with the various generals in charge of the US forces, "skip[s] quickly past the niceties" and begins asking about WMD. No one answers. "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" he asks L. Paul Bremer, the newly installed head of the US civilian-led government (see May 1, 2003). Bremer says no, and a clearly exasperated Bush asks the same question of General Tommy Franks, head of CENTCOM. Franks also denies responsibility. Finally, someone names the Washington official in charge of finding WMD: Defense Department aide Stephen Cambone. "Who?" Bush asks. (Rich 2006, pp. 96)
Appearing on ABC's This Week, Condoleezza Rice defends the Bush administration's prewar intelligence. For example, she tells host George Stephanopoulos, "Already, we've discovered… trailers… that look remarkably similar to what Colin Powell described in his February 5 speech (see February 5, 2003)." (Rice 6/8/2003; Sample 6/9/2003) Asked why the Africa-uranium claim was included in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) even though it had been debunked by the CIA several months earlier (see October 6, 2002), Rice claims the administration had "other sources" which supported the claim that Hussein was determined to obtain uranium from somewhere in Africa. "At the time that the State of the Union address was prepared, there were also other sources that said that they were, the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake, uranium oxide from Africa." (Rice 6/8/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform 3/16/2004) When Stephanopoulos notes that there were several people in the US government who doubted the Africa-uranium claim, Rice responds, "The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that this, that there was serious questions about this report." (Rice 6/8/2003; Milbank and Allen 7/26/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform 3/16/2004)
According to notes taken by Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, President Bush expresses an interest in his January State of the Union Address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) and the subsequent article by the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof questioning the Iraq-Niger uranium claim made in that address (see May 6, 2003). Libby later testifies that he is unsure how he came to know of Bush's interest in the article, and will deny ever discussing it with either Bush or Cheney. Libby will claim that the subject is something he may have wanted to bring to Cheney's attention, and may have learned from a White House staffer. (US Department of Justice 3/5/2004 )
The Senate Intelligence Committee, under the aegis of chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), issues a report on the US intelligence community's prewar intelligence assessments of Iraq. Contained within the report is a section on the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), a section that author Craig Unger will call "extraordinary." The report concludes in part, "At the time the president delivered the State of the Union address (see September 11, 2002, Late September 2002, and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), no one in the IC [intelligence community] had asked anyone in the White House to remove the sentence from the speech" (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002). It also finds, "CIA Iraq nuclear analysts told committee staff that at the time of the State of the Union, they still believed that Iraq was probably seeking uranium from Africa" (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). (US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 6/11/2003 ; Unger 2007, pp. 312)
Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus publishes an article noting that President Bush's claim of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and his allegation that Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), was called into question by what Pincus calls "a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002." The story has caused some consternation in the Office of the Vice President, which became suspicious of Pincus's questioning of White House officials about the matter (see Early June 2003 and June 3, 2003). The "senior administration officials" Pincus quotes, likely either Vice President Cheney's communications director Cathie Martin or Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby (see March 5, 2004), told Pincus that the CIA never told the White House the details of its investigation, and Pincus uses that in his story. Pincus quotes a "senior intelligence official" as saying that the CIA's failure to inform the White House of its doubts regarding the Iraq-Niger claim was "extremely sloppy" handling of a key piece of evidence against Iraq. The official continued: "It is only one fact and not the reason we went to war. There was a lot more." The failure, said a CIA analyst, "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al-Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said. Pincus notes that a "retired US ambassador" went to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the uranium claims; Pincus is referring to the trip by former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), though he writes that his sources—current and former government officials—"spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed." Pincus's sources told him that the CIA did not inform the White House of the details of Wilson's trip (see March 5, 2002 and March 8, 2002). One of Pincus's sources, a "senior intelligence official," said of Wilson's trip: "This gent made a visit to the region and chatted up his friends. He relayed back to us that they said it was not true and that he believed them." Pincus does note that the International Atomic Energy Agency reached the same conclusion as Wilson—that the Iraq-Niger uranium claims were false (see March 7, 2003). Pincus also reports that Cheney's staff did not know about the mission until well after its conclusion, when a New York Times article alluded to it (see May 6, 2003). (Pincus 6/12/2003 ) This claim is false (see March 5, 2002 and March 9, 2003 and After), though Pincus does not know it. Pincus's article will later be used as a basis for questioning Libby in the Plame Wilson leak investigation. Libby will claim not to remember if he was one of Pincus's sources, though he will testify that he did not divulge Plame Wilson's CIA status to the reporter (see March 5, 2004).
A few months after being publicly, and humiliatingly, contradicted by his top civilian Pentagon bosses Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (see February 27, 2003), Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki retires. Neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz attend Shinseki's retirement ceremony, a choice which many see as another public snubbing of the retiring general. Shinseki spends 20 minutes listing the people who had helped the Army during his tenure as Army chief of staff; Rumsfeld's name is conspicuously absent from the listing. And in a veiled jab at his former boss, Shinseki says that "arrogance of power" is the worst substitute for true leadership. In another unusual move, Rumsfeld had already named Shinseki's replacement, General Peter Schoomaker, nearly a year before Shinseki's retirement. (Honolulu Advertiser 6/13/2003; Cannon 6/15/2003)
Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, tells the Washington Post: "I'm not opposed to [self-rule], but I want to do it a way that takes care of our concerns…. In a postwar situation like this, if you start holding elections, the people who are rejectionists tend to win… It's often the best-organized who win, and the best-organized right now are the former Baathists and to some extent the Islamists." (Booth and Chandrasekaran 6/28/2003)
Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador to Gabon and a former diplomatic official in the US embassy in Iraq during the Gulf War (see September 20, 1990), writes an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." Wilson went to Africa over a year ago (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003) to investigate claims that the Iraqi government surreptitiously attempted to buy large amounts of uranium from Niger, purportedly for use in nuclear weapons. The claims have been extensively debunked (see February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Wilson opens the op-ed by writing: "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Wilson notes his extensive experience in Africa and the Middle East, and says candidly: "Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me" (see May 6, 2003). He makes it very clear that he believes his findings had been "circulated to the appropriate officials within… [the] government."
Journey to Niger - Wilson confirms that he went to Africa at the behest of the CIA, which was in turn responding to a directive from Vice President Cheney's office. He confirms that the CIA paid his expenses during the week-long trip, and that, while overseas, "I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government." About Nigerien uranium, Wilson writes: "For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador [Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick] told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq—and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington" (see November 20, 2001). Wilson met with "dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Wilson notes that Nigerien uranium is handled by two mines, Somair and Cominak, "which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German, and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister, and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired." Wilson told Owens-Kirkpatrick that he didn't believe the story either, flew back to Washington, and shared his findings with CIA and State Department officials. "There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report," he writes, "just as there was nothing secret about my trip."
State of the Union Reference - Wilson believed that the entire issue was settled until September 2002, when the British government released an intelligence finding that asserted Iraq posed an immediate threat because it had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa (see September 24, 2002). Shortly thereafter, President Bush repeated the charges in his State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Wilson was surprised by the charge, but put it aside after discussing the issue with a friend in the State Department (see January 29, 2003). Wilson now knows that Bush was indeed referring to the Niger claims, and wants to set the record straight.
Posing a Real Nuclear Threat? - Wilson is now concerned that the facts are being manipulated by the administration to paint Iraq as a looming nuclear threat, when in fact Iraq has no nuclear weapons program. "At a minimum," he writes, "Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted." He is quite sure that Iraq has some form of chemical and biological weapons, and in light of his own personal experience with "Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed." But, he asks, are "these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information.… The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." (Wilson, 7/6/2003)
'Playing Congress and the Public for Fools' - Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will write in 2004 that after Wilson's editorial appears, he checks out the evidence behind the story himself. It only takes Dean a few hours of online research using source documents that Bush officials themselves had cited, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Department of Energy, the CIA, and the United Nations. He will write: "I was amazed at the patently misleading use of the material Bush had presented to Congress. Did he believe no one would check? The falsification was not merely self-evident, it was feeble and disturbing. The president was playing Congress and the public for fools." (Dean 2004, pp. 145-146)
The White House, after much discussion and argument among senior advisers (see July 6-7, 2003), issues a vaguely worded admission that President Bush and his top officials erred in claiming that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). A senior, unnamed White House official says that Bush should not have made the claim (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) by saying: "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.… There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa. However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that attempts were in fact made." The statement is authorized by the White House. (BBC 7/8/2003; McClellan 2008, pp. 168-170)
Dashed Hope that Admission Might Defuse Controversy - White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will later write: "Although two other African countries were mentioned in the [Iraq] NIE (National Intelligence Estimate—see October 1, 2002) as possible sources of uranium for Iraq, the only detailed or specific intelligence about Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa was related to Niger, and this was clearly the primary basis for the president's 16 words" in the State of the Union speech. Senior White House officials, with Bush's authorization, elaborate on the concession. One official says, "We couldn't prove it, and it might in fact be wrong." McClellan will write: "It was the public acknowledgement that the president should have not made the uranium allegation in his State of the Union address and that the information in which it had been based was incomplete or inaccurate. At the White House, everyone hoped the acknowledgement would put the 16-words controversy to rest. The reality was the opposite." (McClellan 2008, pp. 168-170)
Critics: Bush 'Knowingly Misled' US Citizenry, Calls for Firings - Critics of the White House are quick to jump on the claim. "This may be the first time in recent history that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of Union address," says Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe. "Either President Bush knowingly used false information in his State of the Union address or senior administration officials allowed the use of that information. This was not a mistake. It was no oversight and it was no error." Tom Daschle (D-SD), the Senate Majority Leader, calls the admission another reason for Congress to fully investigate the use and misuse of prewar intelligence. Retired Colonel David Hunt, a Fox News analyst, says: "This is an absolute failure. This is an overstatement and it's embarrassing and it's very poor business for the war on terrorism, really bad news." Hunt calls for firings over the admission: "I think there are some people that need to be fired—starting with the [CIA Director George] Tenet. This is bad. When they're blaming him publicly, and that's unheard of… it can't be glossed over. The bureaucracy has got to knock this off. It can't happen anymore." (Fox News 7/9/2003)
Calls for Congressional Investigation - Congressional Democrats demand, but never get, a Congressional inquiry; Senator Carl Levin questions how such a "bogus" claim could have become a key part of the case for war, and Ted Kennedy suggests the claim is a "deliberate deception." McClellan will observe: "Whether legitimate expressions of concern or grandstanding for political gain, their efforts to raise more suspicion about the White House for political gain, their efforts to raise more suspicion about the White House were a natural part of the ongoing partisan warfare that President Bush had promised to end. Now, the way the president had chosen to sell the war to the American people and his reluctance to discuss openly and directly how that case had been made were ensuring his promise would not be kept." (McClellan 2008, pp. 168-170)
Blair Administration 'Furious' at Admission - In Great Britain, officials in the government of Tony Blair are "privately furious with the White House," according to McClellan. Blair's officials insist on standing by the claim, thus causing an embarrasing disparity between the White House and Downing Street. (McClellan 2008, pp. 168-170)
Admission Retracted Days Later - Within days, the White House will retract the admission (see July 11, 2003).
President Bush, asked about the White House's admission that he should not have claimed during his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see Mid-January 2003, 9:01 pm January 28, 2003, and July 8, 2003), does not admit his own error, but instead justifies the US's invasion of Iraq based on somewhat different rationales than he has used before. Bush, speaking to reporters in Pretoria, South Africa, reminds his questioners that Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire nuclear weapons technology before the 1991 Gulf War (see November 1986, 1989, and January 16, 1991 and After), saying: "In 1991, I will remind you, we underestimated how close he was to having a nuclear weapon. Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon.… [A]fter the world had demanded he disarm, we decided to disarm him. And I'm convinced the world is a much more peaceful and secure place as a result of the actions." (Fox News 7/9/2003) Bush's rhetoric contains a subtle but important shift: he now refers to Iraq as having pursued a nuclear weapons "program" rather than having actual weapons themselves. (Rich 2006, pp. 99)
While President Bush is in Uganda, a reporter asks him, "Why—can you explain how an erroneous piece of intelligence on the Iraq-Niger connection got into your State of the Union speech? Are you upset about it? And should somebody be held accountable, sir?" Bush replies, "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services…" National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice responds more specifically a short time later, "I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said 'take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone, without question," Instead, after some changes sought by the CIA were made, "the agency cleared the speech and cleared it in its entirety." Later in the day, CIA Director George Tenet accepts blame for allowing the allegations into the January 2003 speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), saying the information "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed" (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). (Pincus and Milbank 7/12/2003) Reporter Steve Coll will later comment, "I don't know what George Tenet felt as he saw that unfold, but I can imagine that he was dismayed and increasingly resentful that he was being singled out for blame. At the same time, he's such an operator and such a student of Washington that surely, he understood what was happening, that he was being asked, in effect, to fall on his shield so that the president could be reelected." (Kirk 6/20/2006)
Referring to President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), CIA Director George Tenet says in a written statement: "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.… These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president." Tenet denies that the White House is responsible for the mistake, putting the blame squarely on himself and his agency. His statement comes hours after Bush blamed the CIA for the words making it into the speech (see July 11, 2003). (CNN 7/11/2003; Central Intelligence Agency 7/11/2003; Sanger and Risen 7/12/2003)
CIA Chose to Send Wilson to Niger - Tenet also confirms that it was the CIA's choice to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), apparently in an effort to rebut claims that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the mission. Tenet states: "There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam's efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region [Wilson] to make a visit to see what he could learn." Tenet says that Wilson found no evidence to believe that Iraq had attempted to purchase Nigerien uranium, though this did not settle the issue for either the CIA or the White House. (Central Intelligence Agency 7/11/2003)
Coordinated with White House - Tenet's admission was coordinated by White House advisers for what reporter Murray Waas will call "maximum effect." Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, White House political strategist Karl Rove, and Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby had reviewed drafts of Tenet's statement days in advance; Hadley and Rove had suggested changes in the draft. (Waas 3/30/2006) Cheney rejected an earlier draft, marking it "unacceptable" (see July 11, 2003).
White House Joins in Blaming CIA - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also blames the CIA. Peppered with questions from reporters about the claim, she continues the White House attempt to pin the blame for the faulty intelligence on the CIA: "We have a higher standard for what we put in presidential speeches" than other governments or other agencies. "We don't make the president his own fact witness. That's why we send them out for clearance." Had the CIA expressed doubts about the Niger claim before the State of the Union? she is asked (see January 26 or 27, 2003, March 8, 2003, March 23, 2003, April 5, 2003, Early June 2003, June 9, 2003, and June 17, 2003). "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," she replies. "If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' (see January 27, 2003) it would have been gone without question. If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me.… What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we know now, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the president's speech—but that's knowing what we know now." Another senior White House official, defending the president and his advisers, tells ABC News: "We were very careful with what the president said. We vetted the information at the highest levels." But another intelligence official, also interviewed by ABC, contradicts this statement. (CNN 7/11/2003; White House 7/11/2003; Pincus and Milbank 7/12/2003; Sanger and Risen 7/12/2003; Rich 2006, pp. 99; McClellan 2008, pp. 171-172) Tenet's mea culpa is apparently enough for Bush; press secretary Ari Fleischer says, "The president has moved on." (White House 7/11/2003; Rich 2006, pp. 99) White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later claim that at this point Rice is unaware that her National Security Council is far more responsible for the inclusion than the CIA. He will write that the news media reports "not unfairly" that Rice is blaming the CIA for the inclusion. (McClellan 2008, pp. 171-172)
News Reports Reveal Warnings Not to Use Claim - Following Tenet's statement, a barrage of news reports citing unnamed CIA officials reveal that the White House had in fact been explicitly warned not to include the Africa-uranium claim. These reports indicate that at the time Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it had been widely understood in US intelligence circles that the claim had little evidence supporting it. (Donnelly and Neuffer 3/16/2003; Risen 3/23/2003; Singh 6/12/2003; Landay 6/12/2003; Singh 6/12/2003; Landay 6/13/2003; ABC News 6/16/2003; Newsday 7/12/2003; Priest 7/20/2003) For example, CBS News reports, "CIA officials warned members of the president's National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa." And a Washington Post article cites an unnamed intelligence source who says, "We consulted about the paper [September 2002 British dossier] and recommended against using that material." (Martin 7/10/2003; CNN 7/10/2003; Pincus 7/11/2003)
Claim 'Technically True' since British, Not US, Actually Made It - White House officials respond that the dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion, "Iraq has… sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" and that the officials had argued that as long as the statement was attributed to the British intelligence, it would be technically true. Similarly, ABC News reports: "A CIA official has an idea about how the Niger information got into the president's speech. He said he is not sure the sentence was ever cleared by the agency, but said he heard speechwriters wanted it included, so they attributed it to the British." The same version of events is told to the New York Times by a senior administration official, who claims, "The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials." (ABC News 6/12/2003; Martin 7/10/2003; Kristof 7/14/2003; Stevenson 7/19/2003)
Decision Influenced by Office of Special Plans - But according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are investigating the issue, the decision to include the Africa-uranium claim was influenced by the people associated with the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). (Leopold 7/16/2003)
Reactions - Rice says that the White House will not declassify the October 2002 NIE on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) to allow the public to judge for itself whether the administration exaggerated the Iraq-Niger claim; McClellan will write that Rice is currently "unaware of the fact that President Bush had already agreed to 'selective declassification' of parts of the NIE so that Vice President Cheney, or his top aide Scooter Libby, could use them to make the administration's case with selected reporters" (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). (McClellan 2008, pp. 171-172) Two days later, Rice will join Bush in placing the blame for using the Iraq-Niger claim solely on the CIA (see July 13, 2003). McClellan will later write, "The squabbling would leave the self-protective CIA lying in wait to exact revenge against the White House." (McClellan 2008, pp. 172)
Former Ambassador Considers Matter Settled - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims during his fact-finding trip to Niger (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at Tenet's admission. According to his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, "Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point." (Wilson 2007, pp. 140)
Vice President Dick Cheney authorizes his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to leak to the press selected portions of a highly classified CIA report: the debriefing of former ambassador Joseph Wilson upon his return from Niger (see March 4-5, 2002 and March 5, 2002). This will become public in 2006, when material from Libby's grand jury testimony in the Plame Wilson leak investigation is made known (see March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004 and October 28, 2005). Cheney intends to undermine the credibility of Wilson (see June 2003), a prominent war critic, by using the report to contradict his statements that the Bush administration was manipulating intelligence to bolster its claims that Iraq was in possession of WMD (see July 6, 2003), especially his claims that Iraq had not, as the administration has repeatedly claimed (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), tried to buy uranium from Niger. The CIA debriefing report does not mention Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent, nor does it say that Plame Wilson arranged for her husband to go to Niger, as Cheney, Libby, and others will claim. (Waas 6/14/2006; Waas 1/12/2007) After Libby is indicted for perjury (see October 28, 2005), criminal defense lawyer Jeralyn Merritt will write on the progressive blog TalkLeft, "It sure sounds to me like the mechanics of the plan to leak the information about Wilson was cemented, if not formed, on Air Force Two, as a follow up to Ari Fleischer's press gaggle attack on Wilson from Africa (see 3:20 a.m. July 12, 2003), and that the plan was to call reporters and leak the information about Wilson and his wife as gossip coming from other reporters, while shielding themselves by claiming to the reporters that they couldn't be certain the information was true." (Jeralyn Merritt 10/31/2005)
Leaking Plame Wilson's Identity - Hours after Cheney instructs Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby informs reporters Judith Miller (see Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) and Matthew Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003) that Plame Wilson is a CIA agent and she was responsible for selecting her husband for the Niger mission (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003).
Denials - Both Libby and Cheney (see May 8, 2004) will testify that Cheney did not encourage or authorize Libby to reveal Plame Wilson's CIA status. Reporter Murray Waas will write, "But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame [Wilson] was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband" (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, July 7-8, 2003, and July 8, 2003 and After). The same day, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's press spokesperson Cathie Martin discuss ways to rebut and discredit Wilson (see July 12, 2003). President Bush has already authorized Libby to disclose information from a classified intelligence estimate on Iraq in part to discredit Wilson (see March 24, 2004). (Waas 6/14/2006; Waas 1/12/2007) Senior White House officials, including Deputy National Security Director Stephen Hadley and White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who have both worked with Cheney and Libby to formally declassify information in the effort to discredit Wilson (see July 6-10, 2003), will testify that they knew nothing of Cheney's attempts to declassify the Wilson briefing. (Waas 1/12/2007)
New York Times reporter Judith Miller again speaks to Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, in regards to the Iraqi WMD controversy and the recent op-ed by former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003). In Miller's notes, she writes the words "Victoria Wilson." Libby has twice informed Miller that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is a CIA agent (see June 23, 2003 and 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003).
Miller Unsure of Details of Disclosure - In testimony about the interview two years later (see September 30, 2005), Miller will say that "before this [telephone] call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson's wife. In my notebook I had written the words 'Victoria Wilson' with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson. I [testified] that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity." In her testimony, Miller will say that at the time, she believed she had heard Wilson's wife only referred to by her maiden name of Plame. When asked whether Libby gave her the name of Wilson, Miller will decline to speculate.
Criticizing Plame Wilson's Husband - During their conversation, Libby quickly turns the subject to criticism of Wilson, saying he is not sure if Wilson actually spoke to anyone who had knowledge of Iraq's attempts to negotiate trade agreements with Niger. After Miller agrees to attribute the conversation to "an administration official," and not Libby himself, Libby explains that the reference to the Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger in President Bush's State of the Union address—the so-called "sixteen words" (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003)—was the product of what Miller will call "a simple miscommunication between the White House and the CIA."
'Newsworthy' Disclosure - Miller will later testify that at the time, she felt it "newsworthy" that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, and recommended to her editors that the Times pursue the angle. She will write: "I felt that since the Times had run Mr. Wilson's original essay, it had an obligation to explore any allegation that undercut his credibility. At the same time, I added, I also believed that the newspaper needed to pursue the possibility that the White House was unfairly attacking a critic of the administration." (US District Court for the District of Columbia 8/27/2004 ; Gerstein 10/4/2005; Miller 10/16/2005; van Natta, Liptak, and Levy 10/16/2005; US District Court for the District of Columbia 10/28/2005 )
The Iraqi Governing Council is created and its 15 members sworn in. The members were selected by Paul Bremer on July 11 after tense negotiations between the Coalition Provisional Authority and a number of Iraqi opposition groups. Thirteen of the members are Shiites, five are Kurds, five are Sunni Muslims, one is an Assyrian Christian, and another, one of three women on the council, is a Turkoman. Most of the members are Iraqi exile leaders or Kurdish chieftains who worked with the US and Britain prior to the invasion. More than half of the members have connections to, or were members of, the Iraqi National Congress. The new governing council will have the authority to appoint some officials and diplomats, review laws, and approve budgets. But Paul Bremer may veto any of the council's proposals. (Tyler 7/13/2003; Kaplow 7/14/2003)
Conservative columnist Robert Novak, after being told by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and White House political guru Karl Rove that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003), writes a syndicated op-ed column that publicly names her as a CIA officer. The column is an attempt to defend the administration from charges that it deliberately cited forged documents as "evidence" that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003). It is also an attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson, Plame Wilson's husband, who had gone to Niger at the behest of the CIA to find out whether the Iraq-Niger story was true (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Novak characterizes Wilson's findings—that an Iraqi deal for Nigerien uranium was highly unlikely—as "less than definitive," and writes that neither CIA Director George Tenet nor President Bush were aware of Wilson's report before the president's 2003 State of the Union address where he stated that Iraq had indeed tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Novak writes: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials [Armitage and Rove, though Novak does not name them] told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. 'I will not answer any question about my wife,' Wilson told me." Wilson's July 6 op-ed challenging the administration's claims (see July 6, 2003) "ignite[d] the firestorm," Novak writes. (Novak 7/14/2003; Unger 2007, pp. 312-313) Novak also uses the intelligence term "agency operative," identifying her as a covert agent and indicating that he is aware of her covert status. Later, though, Novak will claim that he came up with the identifying phrase independently, and did not know of her covert status. (Waas 7/19/2005)
Asked Not to Print Plame Wilson's Name - Novak will later acknowledge being asked by a CIA official not to print Plame Wilson's name "for security reasons." Intelligence officials will say they thought Novak understood there were larger reasons than Plame Wilson's personal security not to publish her name. Novak will say that he did not consider the request strong enough to follow (see September 27, 2003 and October 1, 2003). (Allen and Priest 9/28/2003) He will later reveal the CIA official as being agency spokesman Bill Harlow, who asked him not to reveal Plame's identity because while "she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment… exposure of her agency identity might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad." In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write: "This struck Novak as an inadequate reason to withhold relevant information from the public. Novak defended his actions by asserting that Harlow had not suggested that Plame or anybody else would be endangered, and that he learned Plame's name (though not her undercover identity) from her husband's entry in the well-known reference book Who's Who in America." (McClellan 2008, pp. 173-174) McClellan will note, "Whether war, smear job, or PR offensive gone haywire, the CIA took the leak of Plame's name very seriously." (McClellan 2008, pp. 174)
Plame Wilson Stricken - According to Wilson's book The Politics of Truth, his wife's first reaction is disbelief at Novak's casual destruction of her CIA career. "Twenty years of loyal service down the drain, and for what?" she asks. She then makes a checklist to begin assessing and controlling the damage done to her work. She is even more appalled after totalling up the damage. Not only are the lives of herself and her family now endangered, but so are those of the people with whom she has worked for 20 years (see July 14, 2003). (Dean 5/12/2004) In 2005, Joseph Wilson will tell a reporter: "[Y]ou can assume that even if 150 people read the Novak article when it appeared, 148 of them would have been the heads of intelligence sections at embassies here in Washington and by noon that day they would have faxing her name or telexing her name back to their home offices and running checks on her: whether she had ever been in the country, who she may have been in contact with, etc." (Alexandrovna 7/13/2005)
Intimidation of Other Whistle-Blowers? - In 2007, author Craig Unger will write: "The implication from the administration was that the CIA's selection of Wilson was somehow twisted because his wife was at the CIA. But, more importantly, the administration had put out a message to any and all potential whistle-blowers: if you dare speak out, we will strike back. To that end, the cover of Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA operative specializing in WMD, had been blown by a White House that was supposedly orchestrating a worldwide war against terror." (Unger 2007, pp. 312-313)
Outing about Iraq, Not Niger, Author Says - In 2006, author and media critic Frank Rich will write: "The leak case was about Iraq, not Niger. The political stakes were high only because the scandal was about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a CIA operative who posed for Vanity Fair. The real victims were the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprits—the big enchilada, in John Ehrlichman's Nixon White House lingo—were not the leakers but those who provoked a war in Iraq for their own motives and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from the fight against those who did attack America on 9/11, and had since regrouped to deadly effect.… Without Iraq, there never would have been a smear campaign against an obscure diplomat or the bungled cover-up [that followed]. While the Bush White House's dirty tricks, like [former President] Nixon's, were prompted in part by a ruthless desire to crush the political competition at any cost, this administration had upped the ante by playing dirty tricks with war." (Rich 2006, pp. 184)
Elevating Profile of Controversy - In 2008, McClellan will write, "By revealing Plame's status, Novak inadvertently elevated the Niger controversy into a full-blown scandal." (McClellan 2008, pp. 173)
An organization called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writes an open letter to President Bush entitled "Intelligence Unglued," where they warn that unless Bush takes immediate action, the US intelligence community "will fall apart—with grave consequences for the nation." They say that it is clear his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and not CIA Director George Tenet, was responsible for the now-infamous "sixteen words" in his January State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). "But the disingenuousness persists," they write. "Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June 8, 2003, about former ambassador Joseph Wilson's mission to Niger in February 2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job" (see July 6, 2003). "Rice's denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into buildings (see May 16, 2002). In September, the joint Congressional committee on 9/11 came up with a dozen such reports" (see December 24, 1994 and January 6, 1995). It is not only Rice's credibility that has suffered, they write, but Secretary of State Colin Powell's as well, "as continued non-discoveries of weapons in Iraq heap doubt on his confident assertions to the UN" (see February 5, 2003). Ultimately, they write, it is Bush's credibility at stake much more than that of his advisers and cabinet members. They lay the blame for the "disingenuousness" from the various members of the administration at the feet of Vice President Dick Cheney: it was Cheney's office who sent Wilson to Niger (see (February 13, 2002)), it was Cheney who told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that Saddam Hussein was about to produce a nuclear weapon (see August 26, 2002), all with intelligence he and his staff knew to be either unreliable or outright forgeries—a "deep insult to the integrity of the intelligence process," they write—it was Cheney and his staff who pressured CIA analysts to produce "cherry-picked" intelligence supporting their desire for war, it was Cheney and his staff who "cooked" the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002). Bad enough that false intelligence was used to help craft Bush's State of the Union address, they write, but that "pales in significance in comparison with how it was used to deceive Congress into voting on October 11 to authorize you to make war on Iraq" (see October 10, 2002). VIPS recommends three things for Bush to implement:
Bring an immediate end to White House attempts to exculpate Cheney from what they write is his obvious guilt and ask for his resignation: "His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation."
Appoint General Brent Scowcroft, the chair of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, to head "an independent investigation into the use/abuse of intelligence on Iraq."
Bring UN inspectors back into Iraq. "This would go a long way toward refurbishing your credibility. Equally important, it would help sort out the lessons learned for the intelligence community and be an invaluable help to an investigation of the kind we have suggested you direct Gen. Scowcroft to lead." (Salon 7/16/2003)
The Wall Street Journal prints an editorial based on, in its words, "[w]hat the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE—see October 1, 2002] said about Iraq's hunt for uranium." The Journal does not mention that the editorial is based on leaked information from the Office of the Vice President via the Defense Department (see July 14 or 15, 2003); in fact, it denies receiving the information from the White House entirely. (It is possible that the Journal editors were not aware that the leaked information originally came from Vice President Dick Cheney's office.) The Journal says "[w]e're reliably told" that the NIE largely supports the Iraq-Niger uranium claims recently repudiated by the Bush administration (see July 8, 2003 and July 11, 2003). According to the material leaked to the Journal, the NIE indicates that before the March 2003 invasion, Iraq was close to producing nuclear weapons, and the regime of Saddam Hussein was actively seeking yellowcake uranium, such as that produced by Niger, to shorten the time it would take to bring actual nuclear devices online. The Journal concludes that the Iraq-Niger claims were "supposedly discredited," but are actually viable, and President Bush was "entirely accurate" in making the Iraq-Niger uranium claim in the January 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). In contrast, CIA Director George Tenet's recent admission that the claim was a "mistake" was, the Journal says, "more tortured than warranted by the assertions in the NIE." (Wall Street Journal 7/17/2003) The day after the editorial is published, the White House releases a heavily redacted version of the NIE to the public (see July 18, 2003).
One of the first media-based attacks on Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame Wilson after her outing as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003) comes from former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who writes a scathing op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Weinberger accuses the opponents of the Iraq invasion of mounting a baseless smear campaign against the Bush administration by "using bits and pieces of non-evidence to contend that we did not have to replace the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein." He asserts that President Bush was correct to say that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), using the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (see October 1, 2002) and a review by a British investigative commission (see September 24, 2002) as support for his argument. He insists that WMD will be found in Iraq. Weinberger then writes that "the CIA committed a major blunder [by asking] a very minor former ambassador named Joseph Wilson IV to go to Niger to investigate" (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Weinberger correctly characterizes Wilson as "an outspoken opponent" of the invasion, but then falsely asserts that "Mr. Wilson's 'investigation' is a classic case of a man whose mind had been made up using any opportunity to refute the justifications for our ever going to war." He asserts that Wilson spent eight days in Niger drinking tea and hobnobbing with ambassadors and foreign service types. Weinberger continues, "Because Mr. Wilson, by his own admission, never wrote a report, we only have his self-serving op-ed article in the New York Times to go by" (see July 6, 2003). He is apparently unaware that Wilson was thoroughly debriefed on his return from Niger (see March 4-5, 2002). He writes, "If we are to rely on this kind of sloppy tea-drinking 'investigation' from a CIA-chosen investigator—a retired ambassador with a less than stellar record—then I would say that the CIA deserves some of the criticism it normally receives." Weinberger concludes that the US had a choice of "either… letting [Saddam Hussein] continue his ways, such as spraying poison on his own people, and breaking every promise he made to us and to the UN; or… removing him before he used nuclear weapons on his neighbors, or on us." (Weinberger 7/18/2003)
Wilsons: Weinberger's Credibility Lacking because of Iran-Contra Connection - In 2007, Plame Wilson will write: "That's rich, I thought. Weinberger had been indicted on charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair (see December 25, 1992) and likely only avoided prison time because of a presidential pardon." (Wilson 2007, pp. 146-147) Wilson himself will note that "Weinberger was not the most credible person to launch that particular counterattack, since, but for the grace of a pardon… he might have well had to do jail time for how poorly he had served his president, Ronald Reagan, in the Iran-Contra affair." (Wilson 2004, pp. 338)
Attempt to Intimidate Others - Wilson will note in 2004 that Weinberger deliberately focused on a minor detail of his report—drinking mint tea with the various people he met during his trip—and used it to "suggest… that supposedly I'd been excessively casual and dilatory in my approach to the mission." He will add: "It seemed that the motive for the attacks on me was to discourage anyone else from coming forward who had a critical story to tell.… In essence, the message was, 'If you pull a "Wilson" on us, we will do worse to you.' However offensive, there was a certain logic to it. If you have something to hide, one way to keep it secret is to threaten anyone who might expose it. But it was too late to silence me; I had already said all I had to say. Presumably, though, they thought they could still silence others by attacking me." (Wilson 2004, pp. 338-339)
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame Wilson has recently been "outed" as a CIA agent by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003), learns from NBC political reporter Andrea Mitchell that "senior White House sources" have told her that "the real story here is not the 16 words in the State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) but Wilson and his wife." Mitchell does not reveal her sources. The next day, Wilson learns that White House political chief Karl Rove has declared his wife "fair game" (see July 21, 2003). (Wilson 2004, pp. 5)
White House chief of staff Andrew Card (see (July 11, 2003)) holds a late-night meeting of what press secretary Scott McClellan will call "select senior advisers"—Card, McClellan, communications director Dan Bartlett, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Gonzales's subordinate Harriet Miers. One topic of discussion is the recent report that the White House had scrubbed a claim of an Iraq-Niger uranium buy from a speech by President Bush in October 2002 (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002), months before Bush's State of the Union address where he did make such a claim (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). The media reports that Hadley was warned to delete the claim by CIA Director George Tenet. Hadley confirms receiving the warning, and tells the assemblage that, three months later, he had forgotten Tenet's warning. "Signing off on these facts is my responsibility," he says. "And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign." Hadley is distressed that Tenet had, in McClellan's words, "been made to look like the scapegoat, since he believed it was nobody's fault but his own." McClellan will call Hadley's offer to resign "selfless .. [his attempt to] clear the name of someone he felt had taken an unfair degree of blame, and to accept his own responsibility for an honest mistake whose consequences were now playing out before a worldwide audience." The others quickly reject Hadley's proffered resignation, and decide, as McClellan will recall, "that an approach of openness, forthrightness, and honesty was now essential." Bartlett and Hadley are delegated to "inform the world as to what had happened and why," and Hadley will admit to having forgotten his conversation with Tenet" (see October 6, 2002). (McClellan 2008, pp. 177-178)
As decided the night before (see July 21, 2003), Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House communications director Dan Bartlett hold a press conference in which Hadley admits to having forgotten about CIA Director George Tenet's October warning that the Iraq-Niger claim was not solid. Hadley admits that President Bush should never have made the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger; he takes responsibility for its inclusion in the president's State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). His admission and apology follow closely on the heels of Tenet's acceptance of responsibility for the "error" (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Hadley admits that he received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from Tenet in October 2002 that questioned the Iraq-Niger allegations and warned that they should not be made public. The allegations were excised from Bush's speech in Cincinnati (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002). Hadley says he should have made sure those same allegations were not in Bush's State of the Union speech: they "should have been taken out of the State of the Union.… There were a number of people who could have raised a hand" to have the passage removed from the draft of Bush's speech. "And no one raised a hand.… The high standards the president set were not met." (In reality, author Craig Unger will later write, the White House was reluctant to go back to Tenet because the CIA had already twice rejected the claim. Instead, White House officials had obtained clearance to use the material from a more amenable CIA subordinate—see January 26 or 27, 2003.) Hadley says he has apologized to Bush for the "error." Bartlett says, "The process failed." He adds that Bush retains "full confidence in his national security adviser [Condoleezza Rice], his deputy national security adviser [Hadley], and the director of central intelligence [Tenet]." Hadley says he had forgotten about the October CIA memos until they were discovered a few days ago by White House speechwriter Michael Gerson. (Associated Press 7/22/2003; White House 7/22/2003; Sanger and Miller 7/23/2003; Alexandrovna and Leopold 11/16/2005; Unger 2007, pp. 273; Leopold 1/23/2007; McClellan 2008, pp. 178) White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later take some responsibility for the lapse, saying, "The fact is that given the October 5 and 6 memorandum [from Tenet], and my telephone conversation with the DCI Tenet at roughly the same time, I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue." The press briefing, McClellan will write, "accomplish[es] our goal of putting the 16-word controversy behind us." (McClellan 2008, pp. 178)
After CIA Director George Tenet admits that President Bush should never have made the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admits the White House also erred in allowing the claim (see July 22, 2003), Hadley's boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, grudgingly admits to her own responsibility in allowing the claim to be made. She tells PBS reporter Gwen Ifill: "What we learned later, and I did not know at the time, and certainly did not know until just before Steve Hadley went out to say what he said last week, was that the director [Tenet] had also sent over to the White House a set of clearance comments that explained why he wanted this out of the speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). I either didn't see the memo, or I don't remember seeing the memo." When Ifill asks if she feels any "personal failure or responsibility" over allowing the false claim, Rice responds: "Well, I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode. The president of the United States has every right to believe that what he is saying in his speeches is of [sic] the highest confidence of his staff." On the same day, Rice continues to insist that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program (see July 30, 2003, July 30, 2003, and July 31, 2003). (Wilson 2004, pp. 352-353)
Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador to Gabon who has played a key part in discrediting the Bush administration's attempts to claim that Iraq tried to purchase weapons-grade uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003)), is interviewed for the PBS Frontline episode, "Truth, Consequences, and War." The interview will be broadcast in early October 2003.
Trip to Niger - Wilson confirms that the CIA sent him to Niger in February 2002 to find evidence either supporting or challenging claims that Iraq tried to purchase weapons-grade uranium from that nation (see Shortly after February 13, 2002 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Wilson notes that the CIA officials who sent him to Iraq "said that the Office of the Vice President had raised questions about this report, and they'd asked them to look into it" (see (February 13, 2002)), but he personally had no contact with anyone in that office.
Reactions to Claims of Iraq-Niger Uranium Deal - Wilson recalls being bemused by President Bush's assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from an African country, but accepted the possibility that he was not referring to Niger, but another African nation that also mines and sells uranium (see January 28-29, 2003). Wilson says the issue became a concern to him when the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents used for the Iraq-Niger claims were obvious forgeries (see March 7, 2003), and the State Department admitted to being gulled by them (see March 8, 2003). He says, "Now, when the State Department spokesman said that, I was moved to say on a news program that I thought that if the US government looked into its files, it would find that it had far more information on this particular subject than the State Department spokesman was letting on" (see March 8, 2003). Wilson calls the decision to allow Bush to make the claim in his State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) irresponsible. "You allow the president of the United States to use information that did not even pass the threshold for an Italian news magazine [Panorama—see October 9, 2002]? You allow him to use that information in the most important speech that he makes in his tenure?"
Correcting the Record - Wilson denies that his decision to write an op-ed for the New York Times exposing the falsehood of the White House claims (see July 6, 2003) was political. Instead, he says, it was "a response to what appeared to me to be a series of misstatements on the part of senior administration officials." Wilson notes that the White House had many opportunities to set the record straight without his intervention, but chose not to. He made pleas to the White House through his friends at the State Department and friends of senior administration officials to be honest about the claims (see January 29, 2003 and March 8, 2003). Wilson reiterates his feelings that the Iraq invasion was outside the bounds of the various United Nations resolutions constraining Iraq's behavior, and that Iraq could have been successfully contained by continuing UN efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime. There were no provable links between Iraq and Islamist terrorism, there was no provable imminent threat to the US or the Middle East from Iraq, and allegations that Iraq had committed genocide could have been addressed through the UN's Genocide Convention.
Blowing His Wife's CIA Identity - Wilson concludes by addressing the leak of his wife Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a CIA official (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, and July 14, 2003), and notes that while he won't confirm that his wife is a CIA official, to publicly expose such an official is a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (see July 16, 2003). It was an attempt to intimidate others, Wilson says: "I think it was a signal to others, that should you decide to come forward, we will do this to your family as well. It was just very sloppy." He adds that if his wife is indeed a CIA official, "if it's a real violation, [it will] cause a lot of pain in our national security apparatus, because at a minimum—the assertions were that she was a CIA operative working in the weapons of mass destruction programs. So if those assertions are true, what this administration has done is they've taken a national security asset involved in a program to which they give high priority, off the table, and to protect whose career? What political objective is so important… that you take a national security asset off—not to shut me up, but to… [shut] others up. That would be the only conclusion I could come to. If you read the story in which this assertion was made, the assertion adds absolutely nothing to the story, nothing. It is not germane, it is not relevant." The interviewer says, "All's fair in love and war," and Wilson responds: "When you're an administration that comes to office on a platform of restoring dignity and honor to the White House, and you act in such a dishonorable and undignified way, then you really do descend to that 'all's fair in love and war' status. I think in that case it's important to point out how duplicitous some in the White House are." (PBS Frontline 10/9/2003)
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer is under pressure to explain how he intends to transfer power in Iraq from the CPA and the hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC—see July 13, 2003), especially in light of Bremer's recent, unilateral cancellation of national elections (see June 28, 2003). Bremer chooses an unusual venue to respond: the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. In a column entitled "Iraq's Path to Sovereignty," Bremer writes that national elections are "simply… not possible" at this time. Instead, the IGC will develop a plan for drafting and ratifying a new constitution. (Bremer 9/8/2003; Roberts 2008, pp. 129-130) This will be followed by elections and, finally, complete transfer of the CPA's powers to the new Iraqi government. Bremer gives no hint of a timetable, and implies that the process will not end quickly. Influential Iraqis, and US allies such as France and Germany, are disturbed by the prospect of an essentially indefinite occupation. Senior Bush officials, particularly National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, will later claim to have been blindsided by Bremer's plan. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a conservative with excellent sources within the White House, will later write that Bremer "hadn't cleared the [Post] piece with his higher-ups in the Pentagon or the White House" (see December 2003 and After). However, Bremer's column is consistent with a Bush statement on Iraqi governance the day before, and with the text of a resolution the administration will try to push through the UN Security Council in October. It is unclear what, if any, authorization Bremer has for his decision, but there are manifest disagreements in the top ranks of White House officials as to the wisdom of Bremer's planning (see November 15, 2003). (Roberts 2008, pp. 129-130)
In a speech to the nation commemorating the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush promises that no more troops are needed in Iraq. The 130,000 currently deployed are enough to handle the mission, he says. Besides, "now some 60,000 Iraqi citizens under arms, defending the security of their own country, are now active, with more coming." The Iraqi Governing Council, which he calls "25 leaders representing Iraq's diverse people," is almost ready to take over governance of their country (see September 8, 2003), Bush says. Viewership for the speech is half the number of people who watched Bush's January State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), and polls indicate that support for the Iraqi occupation is sagging among Americans. (Rich 2006, pp. 102-103)
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, frustrated with Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer's lack of cooperation and coordination with her office (see September 8, 2003 and December 2003 and After), forms the Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG) to oversee Bremer and settle disputes between the Defense and State Departments in governing Iraq. (Roberts 2008, pp. 130) According to unnamed White House officials, the ISG originated with President Bush's frustration at the lack of progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "The president knows his legacy, and maybe his re-election, depends on getting this right," says an administration official. "This is as close as anyone will come to acknowledging that it's not working." Defense Department officials deny that the ISG is designed to take power away from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Don recognizes this is not what the Pentagon does best, and he is, in some ways, relieved to give up some of the authority here," says one senior Pentagon official. In reality, both Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are giving up some control over the reconstruction efforts to the White House, specifically to the National Security Council. Rice will oversee four coordinating committees, on counterterrorism efforts, economic development, political affairs in Iraq and media messaging. One of her deputies will run each committee, assisted by undersecretaries from State, Defense, and the Treasury Department, as well as representatives from the CIA. The counterterrorism committee will be run by Frances Fragos Townsend; the economic committee by Gary Edson; the political affairs committee by Robert Blackwill; and the communications committee by Anna Perez. (Sanger 10/6/2003) In May 2004, the Washington Post will report that the ISG is dysfunctional and ineffective almost from the outset; within months, all but Blackwill have been reassigned (Perez will leave Washington for a job with NBC), and a search of the White House Web site will find no mention of the ISG later than October 2003. (Milbank 5/18/2004)
The White House announces a new plan for Iraqi governance. It is drastically different from the one unilaterally announced by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer two months before (see September 8, 2003). It flip-flops Bremer's plan, putting a transfer of power to a provisional Iraqi government first, then having elections for an interim government, and finally providing for the drafting and adoption of a new constitution. (Roberts 2008, pp. 130)
Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer (see May 1, 2003) asserts his independence from US government oversight, a stance assisted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bremer is formally slated to report to Rumsfeld, but says Rumsfeld has no direct authority over him. Instead, Bremer insists, he reports directly to the White House. Rumsfeld, usually jealously protective of his bureaucratic prerogatives, tells National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: "He doesn't work for me. He works for you" (see Late September, 2003). But Bremer is not willing to report to either Rice or the National Security Council (NSC) either. The White House had already announced that it had no intention of playing a large role in guiding the reconstruction of Iraq, and the NSC's Executive Steering Group, set up in 2002 to coordinate war efforts, has been dissolved. Finally, Bremer flatly refuses to submit to Rice's oversight. As a result, Bremer has already made fundamental policy shifts on his own authority that are at odds with what Pentagon planners had intended (see May 16, 2003 and May 23, 2003), with what many feel will be—or already have caused—disastrous consequences. (Roberts 2008, pp. 128-129)
George W. Bush gives the third state of the union address of his presidency. He states that the Iraq Survey Group found "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" in Iraq and claims that had his administration "failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction program would continue to this day." (Drogin and Goetz 11/20/2005) Throughout his address, Bush plays down the WMD issue, which had driven his rhetoric before the invasion (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Now he focuses on the "liberation" of Iraq. He also challenges those who, like Democratic presidential frontrunner John Kerry (D-MA), advocate using law enforcement methodologies over military methods to combat terrorism. "I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all," he says. "After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers." Author and media critic Frank Rich will later write that this speech is the opening salvo in the Republicans' strategy of "characterizing political opponents as less manly than the Top Gun president." (Rich 2006, pp. 114)
Former Vice President Al Gore gives a keynote address to a conference at the New School of New York City on the topic, "The Politics of Fear." (Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences 2/2004) In his address, Gore notes the success that the Bush administration has had in preying on the fears of the American public. "Fear was activated on September 11 in all of us to a greater or lesser degree," he says. "And because it was difficult to modulate or to change in particular specifics, it was exploitable for a variety of purposes unrelated to the initial cause of the fear. When the president of the United States stood before the people of this nation—in the same speech in which he used the forged document (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003)—he asked the nation to 'imagine' how fearful it would feel if Saddam Hussein gave a nuclear weapon to terrorists who then exploded it in our country. Because the nation had been subjected to the fearful, tragic, cruel attack of 9/11, when our president asked us to imagine with him a new fear, it was easy enough to bypass the reasoning process, and short-circuit the normal discourse that takes place in a healthy democracy with a give-and-take among people who could say, 'Wait a minute, Mr. President. Where's your evidence? There is no connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.' At one point, President Bush actually said, 'You can't distinguish between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden' (see September 25, 2002). He actually said that." Gore says that for a time even he had trusted Bush to do the right thing, but Bush had abused the trust he and the American people had in him. In 2006, author and former White House counsel John Dean will write in conjunction with Gore's address: "In short, fear takes reasoning out of the decision-making process, which our history has shown us often enough can have dangerous and long-lasting consequences. If Americans cannot engage in analytical thinking as a result of Republicans' using fear for their own political purposes, we are all in serious trouble." (Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences 2/2004; Dean 2006, pp. 178-179)
In a talk given at UCLA's Center for International Relations, retired General Anthony Zinni, the former commander of the US military's Central Command (CENTCOM - see April 17, 2003 and After and January 2003), discusses his early planning for the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the inevitable chaos that would ensue, in plans called "Desert Crossing" (see April-July 1999). Zinni began working on the plans shortly after 1998's "Desert Fox" bombing campaign (see December 16-19, 1998).
Plans to Overthrow, No Plans to Reconstruct - He recalls: "[I]t struck me then that we had a plan to defeat Saddam's army, but we didn't have a plan to rebuild Iraq. And so I asked the different agencies of government to come together to talk about reconstruction planning for Iraq.… I thought we ought to look at political reconstruction, economic reconstruction, security reconstruction, humanitarian need, services, and infrastructure development. We met in Washington, DC. We called the plan, and we gamed it out in the scenario, Desert Crossing."
Many of Subsequent Problems Envisioned - Zinni says that he and his team envisioned many of the problems encountered after the March 2003 invasion and subsequent toppling of the Iraqi government: "The first meeting surfaced all the problems that have exactly happened now. This was 1999. And when I took it back and looked at it, I said, we need a plan. Not all of this is a military responsibility. I went back to State Department, to the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Department of Commerce, and others and said, all right, how about you guys taking part of the plan. We need a plan in addition to the war plan for the reconstruction. Not interested. Would not look at it." Zinni, he recalls, decided to have the plans created himself, "because I was convinced nobody in Washington was going to plan for it, and we, the military, would get stuck with it."
Zinni Plans Ignored by Bush Planners - Before the invasion, he recalls, he recommended that the military planners go back and look at his plans: "When it looked like we were going in [to Iraq], I called back down to CENTCOM and said, 'You need to dust off Desert Crossing.' They said, 'What's that? Never heard of it.' So in a matter of just a few years it was gone. The corporate memory. And in addition I was told, 'We've been told not to do any of the planning. It would all be done in the Pentagon.'" Zinni's original plans called for a civilian occupation authority with offices in all 18 Iraqi provinces; the current Coalition Provisional Authority only has one set of offices, in Baghdad's Green Zone. And Zinni's plans called for around 400,000 troops, instead of the 160,000 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved. (John Prados 11/4/2006)
Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni was the chief of the US Central Command until 2000, and, until just before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration's special envoy to the Middle East. Now he has become an outspoken critic of the administration's war efforts in Iraq. Zinni gives an interview to CBS's 60 Minutes, in part to promote his new biography, Battle Ready, co-authored by famed war novelist Tom Clancy.
'Dereliction of Duty' among Senior Pentagon Officials - Zinni says that senior officials at the Pentagon, from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down, are guilty of what he calls dereliction of duty, and he believes it is time for "heads to roll." Zinni tells correspondent Steve Kroft: "There has been poor strategic thinking in this. There has been poor operational planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to 'stay the course,' the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it's been a failure." In his book, Zinni writes: "In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence, and corruption.… I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan. I think there was dereliction in lack of planning."
'The Wrong War at the Wrong Time' - Zinni calls Iraq "the wrong war at the wrong time," and with the wrong strategy. Before the invasion, Zinni told Congress (see October 31, 2002): "This is, in my view, the worst time to take this on. And I don't feel it needs to be done now." The generals never wanted this war, Zinni says, but the civilians in the Pentagon and the White House did. "I can't speak for all generals, certainly," he says. "But I know we felt that this situation was contained (see Summer 2002-2003). Saddam was effectively contained.… And I think most of the generals felt, let's deal with this one at a time. Let's deal with this threat from terrorism, from al-Qaeda."
Much Larger Force Required - Zinni was heavily involved in planning for any invasion of Iraq, going back to at least 1999 (see April-July 1999). Zinni always envisioned any such invasion as being implemented with enough ground forces to get the job done quickly and cleanly. Rumsfeld had different ideas—the invasion could be carried off with fewer troops and more high-tech weaponry. Zinni wanted around 300,000 troops: "We were much in line with General Shinseki's view. We were talking about, you know, 300,000, in that neighborhood." Would a larger force have made a difference? Kroft asks. Zinni replies, "I think it's critical in the aftermath, if you're gonna go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country." Rumsfeld should have anticipated the level and ferocity of violence that erupted in the aftermath of the toppling of the Hussein government, but, Zinni says, he did not, and worse, he ignored or belittled those such as Shinseki and a number of foreign allies who warned him of the possible consequences. Instead, Zinni notes, Rumsfeld relied on, among other sources, fabricated intelligence from Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress (see September 19-20, 2001).
'Seat of the Pants Operation' - The entire reconstruction effort was, in Zinni's mind, a seat-of-the-pants affair. "As best I could see, I saw a pickup team, very small, insufficient in the Pentagon with no detailed plans that walked onto the battlefield after the major fighting stopped and tried to work it out in the huddle," he says, "in effect to create a seat-of-the-pants operation on reconstructing a country." Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer is "a great American who's serving his country, I think, with all the kind of sacrifice and spirit you could expect. But he has made mistake after mistake after mistake." Bremer's mistakes include "Disbanding the army (see May 23, 2003). De-Baathifying (see May 16, 2003), down to a level where we removed people that were competent and didn't have blood on their hands that you needed in the aftermath of reconstruction—alienating certain elements of that society." Zinni reserves most of the blame for the Pentagon: "I blame the civilian leadership of the Pentagon directly."
Heads Should Roll, Beginning with Rumsfeld's - Zinni continues: "But regardless of whose responsibility I think it is, somebody has screwed up. And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they've screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That's what bothers me most." The first one to go, Zinni says, is Rumsfeld: "Well, it starts with at the top. If you're the secretary of defense and you're responsible for that."
Neoconservatives at Fault - Next up are Rumsfeld's advisers, whom Kroft identifies as the cadre of neoconservatives "who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel." Zinni says: "Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced." Kroft identifies that group as including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Elliott Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Zinni calls them political ideologues who have hijacked US policy in Iraq: "I think it's the worst-kept secret in Washington. That everybody—everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do." Like so many others who criticized them, Zinni recalls, he was targeted for personal counterattacks. After publishing one article, he says: "I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it."
Fundamental Conceptual Flaws - Zinni says the neoconservatives believed they could remake the Middle East through the use of American military might, beginning with Iraq. Instead, the US is viewed in the region as "the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world."
Changing Course - Zinni has a number of recommendations. He advises President Bush and his senior officials to reach out much more strongly to the United Nations, and to US allies, and secure the UN's backing. Do these other countries "want a say in political reconstruction? Do they want a piece of the pie economically? If that's the cost, fine. What they're gonna pay for up front is boots on the ground and involvement in sharing the burden." Many more troops are needed on the ground, and not just American troops, he says, enough to seal off the borders, protect the road networks.
Exit Strategy - Zinni says that planning for an exit is necessary because it is inevitable that the US will want to withdraw, and that time will come sooner rather than later. "There is a limit," he says. "I think it's important to understand what the limit is. Now do I think we are there yet?"
Speaking Out - He is speaking out, he says, because it is his duty to do so: "It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result. I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed?" (CBS News 5/21/2004)
Greg Thielmann, a former director of the Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs Office at the State Department's intelligence bureau, compares the aluminum tubes allegations (see Between April 2001 and September 2002 and September 8, 2002) to the Iraq-Niger uranium allegations (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), and finds the aluminum tubes allegations an "even more egregrious case of policymakers' contamination of the intelligence process than the" Iraq-Niger uranium allegations, in the words of former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang. Lang goes on to quote Thielmann as saying: "What was done with the aluminum tubes was far worse than what was done with the uranium from Africa. Because the intelligence community had debated over a period of months, and involved key scientists and engineers in the national laboratories—and foreigners as well—in a long and detailed discussion. The way I would have characterized it, if you had asked me in July 2002, when I turned over the leadership of my office, there was a growing consensus in the intelligence community that this kind of aluminum was not suitable for the nuclear weapons program. So I was really quite shocked to see—I was just retired—the National Intelligence Estimate say that the majority of agencies came to the opposite interpretation, that it was going into the nuclear weapons program." Anyone in the White House or the National Security Council should have, in Lang's words, "seen through the subterfuge and drawn the proper conclusion." Again, Lang quotes Thielmann: "If they had read the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate—see October 1, 2002] in October, it is transparent that there were different views in the intelligence community. They could have read, for example, that the Department of Energy and the State Department INR [intelligence bureau] believed that the aluminum tubes were not going into the nuclear weapons program and instead were going into conventional artillery rockets. And, if one assumes a modicum of intelligence understanding at the [National Security Council], they should know that the agency that is most able to judge on this would be the Department of Energy. They control all the laboratories that actually over the years have enriched uranium and built centrifuges." (Lang 6/2004)
The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA - see April 17, 2003 and After and January 2003) notes in an internal report that while it lacks an accurate personnel count, it "believe[s] it had a total of 1,196 workers" in Baghdad, about half the authorized number. The Pentagon made up the shortfall by turning to the White House Liaison Office to recruit workers. The Liaison Office normally vets political appointees, and is staffed by right-wing ideologues with little practical experience outside Washington. As a result, the Liaison Office has sent hundreds of recruits to Baghdad who, in the phrasing of the CPA Inspector General, have "inconsistent skill sets." Author and public policy professor Alasdair Roberts later notes that what the recruits lack in experience, ability, and qualifications, they make up in dogmatic adherence to right-wing ideology. One telling example is the group of CPA workers who manage the multi-billion dollar budget for the Iraqi government. Few, if any, have ever been to the Middle East, nor do any of them speak any of the region's languages. None have any experience handling budgets of any real size. They are a group of recent college graduates, all in their twenties, who had submitted resumes for unrelated, lower-level jobs through the conservative Heritage Foundation. Roberts later writes, "The inexperience and partisanship of many CPA workers encouraged them to seize the moment and pursue reforms that were unneeded or impractical," implementing what Roberts calls a "radical reconstruction of Iraqi society" based on neoconservative and fundamentalist dogma, with no understanding of, or concern for, Iraqi society. Many of the proposed reforms are later shelved as unworkable and dangerously provocative; one plan, to privatize Iraq's state-run enterprises, is set aside for fear that it would lead to "popular unrest." Most of the staff spend little time in Iraq before returning home; one CPA adviser calls them "90-day wonders getting their tickets punched that said, 'I've been in Baghdad.'" (Roberts 2008, pp. 127-128)
Author Clifford May, a former Republican National Committee staffer and a well-known television pundit, lambasts former ambassador Joseph Wilson's new book, The Politics of Truth (see April 2004). May, who has written derisively about Wilson before (see September 29, 2003), opens by accusing Wilson of publishing a "quickie book sporting his dapper self on the cover" that contains little substance and is based largely on "a wet-kiss profile in Vanity Fair." He derides Wilson's lengthy experience as a diplomat (see July 31, 1990, August 1-2, 1990, August 6, 1990, August 8-9, 1990, September 20, 1990, and January 12, 1991) by calling him "the guy who makes sure the embassy plumbing is working and that the commissary is stocked with Oreos and other products the ambassador prefers." Most notably, May comes to the conclusion that Wilson himself, and not the White House, outed his wife Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, a conclusion he says was reached by a "bipartisan Senate committee report." May is referring to the recent report by the Senate Intelligence Committee (see July 9, 2004). He repeats many of the committee's erroneous assertions, including the allegation that Wilson's wife was responsible for the decision to send Wilson to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). In regards to President Bush's State of the Union assertion that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), May writes, "We now know for certain that Wilson was wrong and that Bush's statement was entirely accurate." He goes on to assert that the forged documents used to support the Iraq-Niger uranium story were likely "planted in order to be discovered—as a ruse to discredit the story of a Niger-Iraq link, to persuade people there were no grounds for the charge. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm." May even says that Wilson's report bolstered the belief that the uranium story might be true. He repeats his earlier charges that Wilson is an incompetent partisan whom the CIA had no business sending to Niger in the first place. He never explains exactly how Wilson outed his own wife as a CIA agent, though he does assert, wrongly, that Plame Wilson was never an undercover agent (see Fall 1992 - 1996) and therefore no one broke the law in revealing her status as a CIA official. (May 7/12/2004) In 2004, Wilson will write of May's assertion that his wife's CIA status "was supposedly widely known" throughout Washington, "[I]f what May wrote was accurate, it is a damning admission, because it could have been widely known only by virtue of leaks among his own crowd." (Wilson 2004, pp. 443-444)
Western intelligence officials say that a French intelligence operation to protect Niger's uranium industry and to prevent weapons proliferation is the inadvertent cause of the forged documents alleging a surreptitious attempt by Iraq to procure uranium from Niger. The operation began in 1999, the officials say. In 2000, French intelligence officials received documents from Italian information peddler Rocco Martino, a source they had used before, that indicated Iraq wanted to expand economic "trade" with Niger. The intelligence officials assumed Iraq wanted to trade for uranium, Niger's main export. Alarmed, the French asked Martino to provide more information, which, the Financial Times reports, "led to a flourishing 'market' in documents." The next documents Martino provided to the French were forgeries, later exposed as such by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (see March 7, 2003). The US, which used the documents to support President Bush's claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger in his 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), later disavowed the claim; the British have yet to do so, insisting that they have other evidence showing the truth behind the allegations. Martino recently confirmed that the documents originated from contacts provided to him by Italian intelligence (see Late July, 2004). A Western intelligence official says: "This issue shows how vulnerable intelligence services and the media are to tricksters like Martino. He responded to a legitimate… demand from the French, who needed the information on Niger. And now he is responding to a new demand in the market, which is being dictated by the political importance this issue has in the US. He is shaping his story to that demand." (Huband 8/2/2004)
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, under fire for his 2002 findings that there was no truth to the reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), speaks at several events arranged by his literary agent in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He and his wife are disappointed that many invitees decline to come based on the recent smear campaign against him—his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, will write in 2007, "[I]t suddenly struck me that we had officially become pariahs"—but some do attend Wilson's short, impassioned presentations. At a book signing at a local library, Wilson asks the attendees if anyone knows who put the infamous "sixteen words" into President Bush's State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). No one raises a hand. He then asks if anyone does not know the name of his wife. Again, no hands. Wilson asks: "What's wrong with this picture? Nobody knows who put a lie in the president's mouth, yet everybody knows the name of a covert CIA officer simply because she is married to a man who had the temerity to challenge the administration." (Wilson 2007, pp. 196-199)
CBS News president Andrew Heyward refuses to air a scheduled segment of 60 Minutes II that probes the allegations of the Bush administration deliberately using forged documents to bolster its claim that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003)). In a statement, the network says it would be "inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election." The network also decides not to run the piece because it has admitted to using questionable documents in a recent segment showing that President Bush received preferential treatment in joining the Texas Air National Guard during the height of the Vietnam War, and shirked his Guard duties thereafter without consequence. CBS had a team of correspondents and consulting reporters working for six months on the segment, and landed the first-ever on-camera interview with Italian journalist Elisabetta Burba, the first reporter to see the forged documents that formed the basis of the uranium allegations. (The CBS reporters also interviewed Burba's source, information peddler Rocco Martino, but chose not to air any of that footage, and do not disclose Martino's identity in the piece. Neither does the segment explore why the FBI has so far been reluctant to interview Martino in its investigation of the fraudulent uranium allegations.) The segment is later described by Newsweek journalists Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball as a hard-hitting investigative piece that "ask[s] tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech" (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), and by Salon reporter Mary Jacoby as "making a powerful case that in trying to build support for the Iraq war, the Bush administration either knowingly deceived the American people about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities or was grossly credulous.… The report contains little new information, but it is powerfully, coherently, and credibly reported." One of the central aspects of the segment is anchor Ed Bradley's interview with Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar, the former chief of Iraq's nuclear program. Jafar confirms to Bradley that Iraq had dismantled its nuclear program after the Gulf War in the face of United Nations inspections. "So what was going on?" Bradley asks. "Nothing was going on," Jafar replies. He says the Bush administration was either "being fed with the wrong information" or "they were doing this deliberately." Another powerful moment is a clip from a German interview with the former foreign minister of Niger, Allele Habibou, whose signature appears on one of the forged documents. The document was dated 2000, but Habibou had been out of the government for 11 years by that point. "I only found out about this when my grandchildren found this on the Internet. I was shocked," he says. The story is twice as long as the usual 15-minute segments broadcast on the show. Bradley, who narrates the report, is reportedly furious at the decision not to broadcast the segment. Jacoby concludes, "60 Minutes defied the White House to produce this report. But it could not survive the network's cowardice—cowardice born of self-inflicted wounds." (Isikoff and Hosenball 9/23/2004; Jacoby 9/29/2004) The story will finally run on 60 Minutes almost two years later (see April 23, 2006).
In the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry accuses the Bush administration of allowing bin Laden to escape Afghanistan in late 2001 by not sending enough US troops to contain him when he was trapped in the Tora Bora region. The New York Times publishes an op-ed by Gen. Tommy Franks, the former head of US Central Command. Franks writes, "On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we 'outsourced' the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.… We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp." Franks is a vocal supporter of Bush's reelection. (Franks 10/19/2004) Shortly after Franks' comments, four Knight Ridder reporters who had been at Tora Bora during the battle revisit the issue. They discover that "Franks and other top officials ignored warnings from their own and allied military and intelligence officers that the combination of precision bombing, special operations forces, and Afghan forces that had driven the Taliban from northern Afghanistan might not work in the heartland of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe." (Knight Ridder 10/30/2004) Author Peter Bergen asserts, "There is plenty of evidence that bin Laden was at Tora Bora, and no evidence indicating that he was anywhere else at the time." Bergen cites after-action US intelligence reports and interviews with US counterterrorism officials that express confidence bin Laden was at Tora Bora. He notes that bin Laden discussed his presence at the Tora Bora battle in a audio message released in 2003. (Bergen 10/28/2004) In 2005, Gary Berntsen, who was in charge of an on-the-ground CIA team trying to find bin Laden (see September 26, 2001), will claim that he gave Franks definitive evidence that bin Laden was trapped in Tora Bora (see Late October-Early December 2001). (Spiegel 1/3/2006) In 2006, former counterterrorism "tsar" Richard Clarke will comment, "Yes, we know [bin Laden] absolutely was there.… And yes, he did escape. And Gen. Franks and the president can deny it until the cows come home, but they made a mistake. They did let him go away." (Clarke 6/20/2006) In late 2006, it will be reported that the CIA possesses a video showing bin Laden walking out of Afghanistan at the end of the Tora Bora battle. It has not been reported if the CIA was aware of this video in 2004 or not (see Mid-December 2001).
President Bush gives the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq war leader General Tommy Franks, and former Iraq functionary Paul Bremer. The Medal of Freedom is the highest honor the president can bestow. Bush comments, "This honor goes to three men who have played pivotal roles in great events and whose efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty." (Associated Press 12/14/2001; Gerhart 12/14/2004) However, the awards will come in for some criticism, as Tenet, CIA director on 9/11, wrongly believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (see December 21, 2002), Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army (see May 23, 2003), and Franks, responsible for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to assign enough troops to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, thereby enabling him to escape (see Late October-Early December 2001). (Cohen 12/14/2001) John McLaughlin, Tenet's deputy director, will later say that Tenet "wishes he could give that damn medal back." (Shenon and Mazzetti 10/2/2006) White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later write that this "well-intentioned gesture designed to create positive impressions of the war seemed to backfire." Instead of holding these three accountable for their role in the deepening Iraq crisis, Bush hails them as heroes. McClellan will observe: "Wasn't this supposed to be an administration that prided itself on results and believed in responsibility and accountability? If so, why the rush to hand out medals to people who had helped organize what was now looking like a badly botched, ill-conceived war?" (McClellan 2008, pp. 250-251) David Wade, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry (D-MA), says, "My hunch is that George Bush wasn't using the same standard when honoring Tenet and Bremer that was applied to previous honorees." Previous recipients include human rights advocate Mother Teresa, civil rights icon Rosa Parks, and Pope John Paul II. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) says he "would have reached a different conclusion" on Tenet. "I don't think [he] served the president or the nation well." (Associated Press 12/14/2001) Reporter Steve Coll will later comment: "I presume that for President Bush, it was a signal that he wasn't making Tenet a scapegoat. It would be the natural thing to do, right? You've seen this episode of 'I, Claudius.' You know, you put the knife in one side and the medal on the other side, and that's politics." And author James Bamford will say: "Tenet [retired], and kept his mouth shut about all the things that went on, about what kind of influence [Vice President Dick] Cheney might have had. They still have a CIA, but all the power is now with his team over at the Pentagon. They're gathering more power every day in terms of intelligence. So largely, Cheney won." (Kirk 6/20/2006) Author and media critic Frank Rich will later write: "The three medals were given to the men who had lost Osama bin Laden (General Tommy Franks), botched the Iraq occupation (Paul Bremer), and called prewar intelligence on Saddam's WMDs a 'slam dunk' (George Tenet). That the bestowing of an exalted reward for high achievement on such incompetents incited little laughter was a measure of how much the administration, buoyed by reelection, still maintained control of its embattled but not yet dismantled triumphalist wartime narrative." (Rich 2006, pp. 158)
Outgoing Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, one of the key architects of the Iraq occupation, is bemused by the fact that, despite his predictions and those of his neoconservative colleagues, Iraq is teetering on the edge of all-out civil war. He has come under fire from both political enemies and former supporters, with Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) accusing him of deceiving both the White House and Congress, and fellow neoconservative William Kristol accusing him of "being an agent of" disgraced Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (see November 6-December 18, 2006). Feith defends the invasion of Iraq, calling it "an operation to prevent the next, as it were, 9/11," and noting that the failure to find WMD is essentially irrelevant to the justification for the war. "There's a certain revisionism in people looking back and identifying the main intelligence error [the assumption of stockpiles] and then saying that our entire policy was built on that error." Feith is apparently ignoring the fact that the administration's arguments for invading Iraq—including many of his own assertions—were built almost entirely on the "error" of the Iraqi WMD threat (see July 30, 2001, Summer 2001, September 11, 2001-March 17, 2003, Shortly After September 11, 2001, September 14, 2001, September 19-20, 2001, September 20, 2001, October 14, 2001, November 14, 2001, 2002, 2002-March 2003, February 2002, Summer 2002, August 26, 2002, September 3, 2002, September 4, 2002, September 8, 2002, September 8, 2002, September 10, 2002, September 12, 2002, Late September 2002, September 19, 2002, September 24, 2002, September 24, 2002, September 28, 2002, October 7, 2002, December 3, 2002, December 12, 2002, January 9, 2003, February 3, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 8, 2003, March 22, 2003, and March 23, 2003, among others).
Cultural Understanding Did Not Lead to Success - Feith says he is not sure why what he describes as his deep understanding of Iraqi culture did not lead to accurate predictions of the welcome the US would receive from the Iraqi people (see November 18-19, 2001, 2002-2003, September 9, 2002, and October 11, 2002). "There's a paradox I've never been able to work out," he says. "It helps to be deeply knowledgeable about an area—to know the people, to know the language, to know the history, the culture, the literature. But it is not a guarantee that you will have the right strategy or policy as a matter of statecraft for dealing with that area. You see, the great experts in certain areas sometimes get it fundamentally wrong." Who got it right? President Bush, he says. "[E]xpertise is a very good thing, but it is not the same thing as sound judgment regarding strategy and policy. George W. Bush has more insight, because of his knowledge of human beings and his sense of history, about the motive force, the craving for freedom and participation in self-rule, than do many of the language experts and history experts and culture experts."
'Flowers in Their Minds' - When a reporter notes that Iraqis had not, as promised, greeted American soldiers with flowers, Feith responds that they were still too intimidated by their fear of the overthrown Hussein regime to physically express their gratitude. "But," he says, "they had flowers in their minds." (Goldberg 5/9/2005; Scoblic 2008, pp. 228-229)
Italian lawmaker Senator Massimo Brutti states that in January 2003 (see November 20, 2005) Italy's military intelligence service, SISMI, warned the United States that its reporting (see March 25, 2002) (see October 15, 2001) (see February 5, 2002) on Iraq's purported attempts to procure uranium from Niger were wrong. Brutti says he is not sure whether this warning was sent before or after President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). "At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they (Italy's SISMI secret services) said that the dossier doesn't correspond to the truth," Sen. Massimo Brutti tells journalists after he and other lawmakers on a parliamentary commission were briefed by SISMI's head, Nicolo Pollari, and Gianni Letta, a top aide to Premier Silvio Berlusconi. (David 11/3/2005) Shortly after making the statement, Brutti calls the Associated Press and says these comments were made in error. There was no warning in January 2003, he says. He also says lawmakers were told during the briefing that Italian intelligence did not have "a role in the dossier that was supposed to have demonstrated that Iraq was in an advanced phase of possession of enriched uranium." (David 11/3/2005; Stewart 11/3/2005)
The second part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the mismanagement of intelligence before the Iraq invasion (see July 9, 2004) is being held up by the Pentagon's internal investigation of former Defense Department official Douglas Feith, one of the department's primary architects of the war plans (see Late December 2000 and Early January 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, September 20, 2001, Fall 2002, and May 9, 2005). The committee is waiting on a report from the Pentagon inspector general on Feith's alleged role in manipulating pre-war intelligence to support a case for war. Feith is also being investigated by the FBI for his role in an Israeli spy case. One aspect of the committee's investigation is likely to focus on the efforts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to procure top-level security clearances for Feith after he was fired from the National Security Council in 1982 over allegations of espionage (see March 1982). Feith is one of a large number of pro-war conservatives to shuttle in and out of the Pentagon despite being involved in intelligence-related scandals (see Late 1969, October 1970, 1978, April 1979, March 1981, 1983, April 13, 1999-2004, 2001, and October 5, 2005), many of whom were provided security clearances by Rumsfeld. The committee's report is being delayed because both Feith and the Defense Department refuse to provide documents and witnesses to the committee. The committee is investigating whether Feith and other current and former Defense Department officials broke the 1947 National Security Act by refusing to keep the committee "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities" and refusing to "furnish the Congressional intelligence committees any information or material concerning intelligence activities, other than covert actions, which is within their custody or control, and which is requested by either of the Congressional intelligence committees in order to carry out its authorized responsibilities." Senate sources say committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) is not pressuring the Pentagon to cooperate, but instead is deferring to the Pentagon's Inspector General, in essence allowing the Pentagon to investigate itself. (Alexandrovna 1/30/2006) The report will be issued in June 2008, with few of the above issues addressed (see June 5, 2008).
Major General Paul Eaton, who retired last month after being in charge of training new Iraqi military personnel, says the Bush administration's strategy to use those new Iraqi troops to replace departing American troops was crippled from the beginning. Eaton says that the replacement program was never given the planning, funding, or staffing it needed to progress. The first year of the occupation was a critical time, Eaton says, and the US and Iraqi military might be much closer to President Bush's goal of Iraqi forces "standing up" as US forces "stand down" had so much of that first year not been lost. Former military officials interviewed by the New York Times agree with Eaton's assessment, as do a number of civilian officials involved in US operations in Iraq at the time. Eaton was replaced as the senior US official in charge of training Iraqi troops by Lieutenant General David Petraeus. Eaton began his yearlong stint on May 9, 2003, and now recalls: "I was very surprised to receive a mission so vital to our exit strategy so late. I would have expected this to have been done well before troops crossed the line of departure. That was my first reaction: 'We're a little late here.'" Eaton was told that training Iraqi troops was fifth on the priority list for Iraqi security forces, behind a civil defense corps, police, border guards, and guards for government and commercial facilities. "We set out to man, train, and equip an army for a country of 25 million—with six men," Eaton recalls. He worked into the fall of 2003 with what he calls "a revolving door of individual loaned talent that would spend between two weeks and two months." He never received even half of the 250 professional staff members he was promised. Between the chaos that ensued immediately after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the decision by Coalition Provisional Agency head L. Paul Bremer to dissolve the Iraqi army (see May 23, 2003), and the insurgency that arose shortly thereafter, Eaton and his small staff were never able to build the army they had hoped. Perhaps the worst blow was the wholesale dissolution of the Iraqi army. This left Eaton to train an entire military force essentially from scratch, without any Iraqi noncommissioned officers. New York Times reporter Thom Shanker observes, "Training an army without noncommissioned officers to serve as drill sergeants is like pitching a tent without poles." (Shanker 2/11/2006)
Nicaraguan presidential candidate Daniel Ortega says that if he wins the election on November 5, he will make sure that Nicaragua joins the Alternativa Bolivariana para la America (ALBA), or the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Initiated by Venezuelan and Cuba in 2005, ALBA is intended to counter Washington's Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). One of ALBA's stated goals is to promote social and economic justice. (Rogers 5/5/2006)
US ambassador in Managua Paul Trivelli sends a letter to Nicaraguan conservative political parties offering US support for primaries that would select one presidential candidate to run against Sandinista Daniel Ortega. The US is concerned that in a multi-candidate race, Ortega will secure enough votes to avoid a run-off election. According to Nicaraguan election law, a candidate only needs 35 percent of the votes to win. The letter states: "As part of my government's efforts to respond to these requests to promote democratic practices and free elections in Nicaragua, the US is willing to collaborate in this process." Trivelli says the parties must respond with a list of their candidates no later than April 18. All of the parties reject the request. (Nicaragua News Service 4/12/2006)
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells reporter Robert Scheer that neither he nor any of the State Department's top experts believed that Iraq ever posed an imminent nuclear threat, contrary to the statements of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other top White House officials. Powell says that Bush followed the advice of Cheney and the CIA (see October 1, 2002) in making the claim (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) and taking the country to war in Iraq. Scheer asks Powell why, in light of the State Department's own intelligence bureau correctly concluding that the claims that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger were false (see March 1, 2002, March 4, 2002, Mid-October 2002, and January 12, 2003), Bush ignored that information in making his case for war? Powell responds: "The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily (see March 7, 2003) and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote. That was a big mistake. It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it" (see January 26, 2003). Powell adds that the responsibility for pressing the argument that Iraq was a nuclear threat was not Bush's; rather, "That was all Cheney." In his article, Scheer asks, "Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistle-blower Wilson, whose credibility the president then sought to destroy?" (Scheer 4/11/2006)
CNN airs commentary from three of its "independent military analysts," some of whom will later be cited as participants in the Pentagon's Iraq propaganda operation (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). The analysts are retired Army Brigadier General James "Spider" Marks (whom CNN will later fire for conflicts of interest—see July 2007), retired Air Force Major General Donald Shepperd, and retired US Army Brigadier General David Grange. The topic is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and whether he should resign. After Marks confirms that Rumsfeld repeatedly refused requests from field commanders to send more troops into Iraq during critical battlefield moments (see April 16, 2006), CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer raises the issue of other retired generals calling for Rumsfeld's resignation.
Grange - Grange dismisses the resignation demands as coming from "a small number of general officers…" Grange says he does not have a close relationship with Rumsfeld, but admits that he participates in "occasional" briefings with Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials. Grange says "it would be inappropriate [for Rumsfeld] to step down right now," and adds that it really isn't the generals' business to make any such recommendations.
Shepperd - Blitzer plays the commentary of retired Army Major General Paul Eaton, who blames Rumsfeld for not putting "enough boots on the ground to prosecute" the Iraq war and has also called for Rumsfeld's resignation, then asks Shepperd for his commentary. Shepperd, one of the most reliable of the Pentagon's "independent analysts" (see June 24-25, 2005), says while Rumsfeld made some "misjudgments," he should not resign. Like Grange, he questions the "propriety" of the retired generals' speaking out on the subject. "It steps over, in my opinion, the line of the role of military general officers, active or retired, calling for the resignation of a duly appointed representative of the government by a duly elected government. That's the problem I have with all of this. And it's hard to have a rational discussion because you quickly get into, is the war going well or not, do we or do we not have enough troops, when the question is one of propriety about these statements."
Marks - Marks adds his voice to the chorus, saying that "it's not the place of retired general officers or anyone to make that statement.…[T]he country's at war. You need to rally around those doing their best to prosecute it." Though Marks stands with both Grange and Shepperd in defending Rumsfeld from calls for his resignation, he does note that he retired from the Army in part because of Rumsfeld's cavalier treatment of two of his close friends, retired General Eric Shinseki (see February 25, 2003 and February 27, 2003) and General David McKiernan. (CNN 4/16/2006)
Nicaraguan presidential candidate Daniel Ortega strikes a deal with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that will allow an alliance of 51 Nicaraguan mayors, many from the Sandinista party, to purchase 10 million barrels of Venezuelan fuel on preferential terms. Under the agreement, the mayors will pay 60 percent of the cost of their purchases within 90 days of shipment, with the remaining 40 percent payable over the next 25 years at one percent interest, with a two-year grace period. In Nicaragua, high oil prices have led to rolling blackouts and transportation strikes. (Xinhua News Agency (Beijing) 4/26/2006; Associated Press 5/5/2006) Chavez says Venezuela will also donate 10,000 tons of urea to Sandinista farming organizations. (Associated Press 5/5/2006) During Ortega's visit to Venezuela, he also says (see April or May 2006) that if he wins the November 5 elections, he will make sure Nicaragua joins the Alternativa Bolivariana para la America (ALBA), or the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which was initiated by Venezuela and Cuba in 2005.
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