"Actually, it is not obvious that the other errors actually slipped past the State Department or the CIA, even though that is the cover story offered by the CIA."
Indeed. I'm inclined to say it stretches all credibility that the fact of the forgeries "slipped past" everyone. The known history of the Admin's treatment and use of them alone strongly suggests otherwise. As e.g. Dennis Hans has pointed out (sorry for the long quotation):
"According to the former senior CIA officer (as paraphrased by Hersh), “the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration.” But if that was the case, the subsequent behavior of administration hawks defies common sense and everything we know about them. Here we are in the fall of 2002, with the pro-war marketing campaign in full swing, and no one is doing a thing with those damning documents.
In late November — mere weeks after the documents had supposedly won “widespread acceptance” among the Bushies — the U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq and immediately undermined much of the U.S.-British case. Inspectors visited a host of sites that supposedly were humming with proscribed WMD activity and found long-abandoned buildings at some sites and legitimate activity at others. This was widely reported in the media. For the Bushies, what better way to wipe the egg off their faces and nail the “cheat and retreat” Iraqis to the wall than by presenting to the world incontrovertible evidence that Iraq has been doing something it swears it hasn’t — seeking and buying uranium like it was going out of style?
For goodness sake, the Bushies had documents — official Iraqi and Nigerien documents — about uranium. Uranium! Sure, it’s not yet enriched to weapons-grade, but a little detail like that wouldn’t stand in the way of a frighteningly successful propaganda-and-scare campaign. If those documents had been widely or even narrowly perceived within the administration as genuine, the whole world would have seen those documents. Repeatedly. In every venue imaginable. Instead, the documents were kept under lock and key. Heck, they weren’t even leaked to the two most gullible or pretend-gullible reporters in the world: Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker and Judith Miller of the New York Times, who along with their editors stood ready, willing and able to spread most any preposterous story that would build public support for war. (I just realized I may have offended the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward. He, too, would be near the top of the list for such a leak.)
Instead, U.S. officials very gingerly exploited the documents — or I should say the “information” in the documents. Rather than a concerted campaign we had occasional statements — a State Department “fact sheet,” a Powell speech overseas, a Condi Rice op ed in the “liberal” New York Times — none of which cited, let alone presented, supporting documentation in the form of official Iraqi and Nigerien papers. From what we know of the deliberations preceding Bush’s State of the Union address, not one single soul suggested that Bush buttress the uranium claim by citing or brandishing those documents.
If the documents had been believed in October, why weren’t the Pentagon, CIA, DIA, State Department and Cheney’s staff in a mad dash to see who would be first to present the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency? Imagine the propaganda value in having the IAEA — widely respected and trusted throughout the world, particularly among populations most inclined to distrust Bush — evaluate and publicly confirm the authenticity of the documents. Instead, it took several months for the IAEA to pry the documents from the State Department, which sheepishly included a cover letter saying it really wasn’t all that sure about their authenticity."
And should the existence of a hitherto unrevealed forgery claiming a "fantastic collaboration of 'outlaw' nations" be confirmed, I'd tend even more than I already do to suspect the active role of more than just SISMI in the actual forging of the documents.
Is there any chance of consolidating this series into a single document, probably a PDF?
Posted by Alan at December 1, 2005 09:40 AMThe DGSE has got into the act now as well.
Posted by Alan at December 1, 2005 01:18 PMMay the completely confused final paragraph of my original comment be forever stricken from the record....
Posted by KM at December 1, 2005 08:13 PMAlan,
Thanks for the link. I will take a look at it this weekend.
Posted by eriposte at December 1, 2005 10:11 PMGreat post. FYI: I passed this info on along to Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel at Knight Ridder in the hopes that they can help move this story forward.
Posted by Kent Bye at December 2, 2005 07:09 AM