there was a tease on Blitzer, so I went on line and found this:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion.
The story goes on to say that while the indictment does not mention the lawmakers
the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. There was no indication the three lawmakers knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
I know nothing more, but thought people would want to know. And this is my first ever use of "BREAKING"
I will be adding info below the fold as it becomes available
MSNBC add this:
Federal prosecutors say al-Hanooti, a former official of a charity based in Michigan called Life for Relief & Development, was an unregistered agent of the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. They say he reported to Saddam's spy agency, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and worked on its behalf to organize the trip by members of Congress who were interested in ending the embargo on Iraqi oil.
The indictment apparently says he was paid 2 million barrels of oil to arrange the trip.
UPDATE 6:10 so far most sites only have the barebones 3 paragraph AP story. The additional information above from MS-NBC seems to be all the additional information.
UPDATE 6:17 PM More of the AP story is now out, including byline by Matt Apuzzo. From JOurnal-News:
"Obviously we didn't know it at the time," McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said Wednesday. "The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That's the only reason we went."
The story goes on to quote the lawmakers as expression skepticism about the Bush administration's claims of WMD. It then quotes Don Nickles:
Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats "sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government."
McDermott's spokesman says he was invited by a church group and unaware of any other funding.
6:25 PM I am not finding any additional information on newspaper websites right now. Kelli Arena just spoke about it on CNN, and I'm not sure from what i can here that there is anything substantial beyond the AP story.
I have to leave my current site and head home, so I am not going to be closely monitoring this in the next 30 minutes or so. I hope others will continue to add details in the comments.
Peace.
Now HOme at 7:15 reading through the thread it seems anything worthwhile is being said in the discussion, and there is no need to attempt to update the diary with additional information.
I apologize that I did not make clear that what made this breaking was the indictment of the middleman, allegedly paid via Iraqi Intelligence to set up the trip. I think that - and the other issues - have been well qualified by others in their comments.