Two CIA-related articles

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n..._usa_zarqawi_dc

 

CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link

 

Wed Oct 6,12:24 AM ET   Top Stories - Reuters

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CIA report has found no conclusive evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the Bush administration asserted before the invasion of Iraq.

 

"There's no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi," a U.S. official said on Tuesday about the CIA findings.

 

But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the report, which was a mix of new information and a look at some older information, did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions.

 

"To suggest the case is closed on this would not be correct," the official said in confirming an ABC News story about the CIA report that the network said was delivered to the White House last week.

 

ABC quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official as saying that the CIA document raises "serious questions" about Bush administration assertions that Zarqawi found sanctuary in pre-war Baghdad.

 

"The official says there is no clear cut evidence that Saddam Hussein even knew Zarqawi was in Baghdad," ABC reported.

 

The CIA report concludes Zarqawi was in and out of Baghdad, but cast doubt on reports that Zarqawi had been given official approval for medical treatment there as President Bush said this summer, ABC said.

 

Earlier on Tuesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan reasserted that there was a relationship between Saddam and Zarqawi.

 

"He was in contact from Baghdad with Ansar al-Islam in the northeastern part of Iraq. He had a cell operating from Baghdad during that period, as well. So there are clearly ties between Iraq and -- between the regime, Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda," McClellan told reporters.

 

Before last year's invasion to topple Saddam, the Bush administration portrayed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's link to Baghdad.

 

Following Saddam's capture in December and waves of suicide attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces which followed, Zarqawi quickly became America's top enemy in Iraq. The United States placed a $25 million bounty on his head.

 

The Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his militant Tawhid and Jihad group have claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings.

 

and..

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html

 

The CIA 'old guard' goes to war with Bush

By Phillip Sherwell in Washington

(Filed: 10/10/2004)

 

A powerful "old guard" faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.

 

The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.

 

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such "viciousness and vindictiveness" in a battle between the White House and the agency.

 

John Roberts, a conservative security analyst, commented bluntly: "When the President cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences."

 

Relations between the White House and the agency are widely regarded as being at their lowest ebb since the hopelessly botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-sponsored exiles under President John F Kennedy in 1961.

 

There is anger within the CIA that it has taken all the blame for the failings of pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes.

 

Former senior CIA officials argue that so-called "neo-conservative" hawks such as the vice president, Dick Cheney, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his number three at the defence department, Douglas Feith, have prompted the ill-feeling by demanding "politically acceptable" results from the agency and rejecting conclusions they did not like. Yet Colin Powell, the less hardline secretary of state, has also been scathing in his criticism of pre-war intelligence briefings.

 

The leaks are also a shot across the bows of Porter Goss, the agency's new director and a former Republican congressman. He takes over with orders from the White House to end the in-fighting and revamp the troubled spy agency as part of a radical overhaul of the American intelligence world.

 

Bill Harlow, the former CIA spokesman who left with the former director George Tenet in July, acknowledged that there had been leaks from within the agency. "The intelligence community has been made the scapegoat for all the failings over Iraq," he said. "It deserves some of the blame, but not all of it. People are chafing at that, and that's the background to these leaks."

 

Fighting to defend their patch ahead of the future review, anti-Bush CIA operatives have ensured that Iraq remains high on the election campaign agenda long after Republican strategists such as Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser, had hoped that it would fade from the front pages.

 

In the latest clash, a senior former CIA agent revealed that Mr Cheney "blew up" when a report into links between the Saddam regime and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist behind the kidnappings and beheadings of hostages in Iraq, including the Briton Kenneth Bigley, proved inconclusive.

 

Other recent leaks have included the contents of classified reports drawn up by CIA analysts before the invasion of Iraq, warning the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba'athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war.

 

Critics of the White House include officials who have served in previous Republican administrations such as Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism and member of the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan.

 

"These have been an extraordinary four years for the CIA and the political pressure to come up with the right results has been enormous, particularly from Vice-President Cheney.

 

"I'm afraid that the agency is guilty of bending over backwards to please the administration. George Tenet was desperate to give them what they wanted and that was a complete disaster."

 

With the simmering rows breaking out in public, the Wall Street Journal declared in an editorial that the administration was now fighting two insurgencies: one in Iraq and one at the CIA.

 

In a difficult week for President Bush leading up to Friday's presidential debate, the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group confirmed that Saddam had had no weapons of mass destruction, while Mr Rumsfeld distanced himself from the administration's long-held assertion of ties between Saddam and the al-Qaeda terror network.

 

Earlier, unguarded comments by Paul Bremer, the former American administrator of Iraq who said that America "never had enough troops on the ground", had given the row about post-war strategy on the ground fresh impetus.

 

With just 23 days before the country votes for its next president, both sides are braced for further bruising encounters.

 

I can imagine why some CIA agents are mad at Bush. Pissing off CIA agents isn't usually a very good idea.

 

There's a bit more to this, I suspect

[Guest MikeSC]

It's Bush's fault the CIA has bombed with intel so badly?

 

If they wish to leak info to hurt Bush, they should be removed. God knows we couldn't find people to fuck up their jobs more than they already have.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

It's more than likely that the order given to CIA agents was "find evidence that Iraq has WMDs" and such evidence did end up being used and stretched by this administration.

 

If they wish to leak info to hurt Bush, they should be removed.

 

That might be a matter of wanting somebody in your tent taking a leak or out of your tent taking a leak into your tent.

 

Then again, maybe Bush should get some plummers.