With revelations about Dick Cheney's mystery CIA assassination squad and outrage by congressional Democrats over being kept in the dark, I got to wondering about a couple of other suspected CIA operations and just how informed Congress was about those.
Remember the grand-daddy of Iraq war lies -- the infamous Niger Uranium Forgeries? Or how about the lesser-know Saddam-al Qaeda linkage document, also demonstrated to be a fake? In each case, of course, these were documents that the Bush Administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq. And there is also very reliable reporting suggesting that both of these forgeries were actually created by the CIA at the behest Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.
Perhaps the congressional intelligence committees could use the occasion of the assassination-squad investigation to finally find out the truth about the CIA's role in carrying out Bush's political objectives.
The Niger Uranium Forgeries, which first turned up only a month after the 9/11 attacks, were presented as evidence that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from Niger in order to construct a nuclear weapon. It was these documents that prompted Joe Wilson's trip to Niger and they were used as a foundation for convincing Americans that Iraq was a nuclear threat. And they were, of course, eventually confirmed to be complete forgeries.
Over the years, there's been a tremendous amount of speculation about who created the Niger documents. And sifting through the reporting on this, it would be hard not to come away with the impression that the CIA was responsible.
Seymour Hersh reported that the forgeries were a CIA operation.
In an interview with Scott Horton, Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism officer, also pointed a finger in the direction of the CIA.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former Director of Intelligence Programs for the United States National Security Council (among other sterling credentials) has also suggested that Niger Forgeries were created in the U.S. and hinted at a nexus of American intelligence operations and Iraqi exiles associated with Ahmad Chalabi.
The other forgery, perhaps even more relevant to congressional investigators, was a letter that purported to link Mohammed Atta to Iraq. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, who spoke with CIA officers involved with the operation, President Bush specifically ordered the CIA to create a forgery showing a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
"It was a dark day for the CIA," Suskind told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on Tuesday. "It was the kind of thing where [the CIA] said, ‘Look, this is not our charge. We’re not here to carry forth a political mandate — which is clearly what this was — to solve a political problem in America.’ And it was a cause of great grievance inside of the agency."
The author writes that Bush’s action is "one of the greatest lies in modern American political history" and suggests it is a crime of greater impact than Watergate.
[...]
Suskind writes: "The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally, that there was an operation link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade."
He continues: "A handwritten letter, with Habbush's name on it, would be fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination."
CIA officers Richer and John Maguire, who oversaw the Iraq Operations Group, are both on the record in Suskind’s book confirming the existence of the fake Habbush letter.
When asked by Vieira for further proof of the letter, Suskind said: "Well, the CIA folks involved in the book and others talk about George Tenet coming back from the White House with the assignment on White House stationery, and turning to the CIA operatives, who are professionals, and saying, ‘You may not like this, but here is our next mission.’
"And they carried it through step by step, all the way to the finish."
The London Sunday Telegraph first published a story about the letter in December 2003, on the same day that Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq. Reported as genuine, the letter made an immediate impact upon the media in terms of justifying the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Suskind relates how NBC reported the letter, with journalist Con Coughlin telling Tom Brokaw that the letter "is really concrete proof that al-Qaeda was working with Saddam."
Clearly, this was an explosive revelation and it's unfortunate how quickly it slipped by amidst the fog of blatant criminality that was the Bush presidency. It's even more unfortunate that this operation has never been the subject of a robust congressional investigation. After all, Suskind even provides the names of the CIA officers who confirmed the existence of the letter.
If Congress is going to start taking an interest in what the CIA is hiding from them, they might want to ask a few questions about forged documents. They might just want to finally investigate how George W. Bush and Dick Cheney used the CIA for political purposes to sell a war of choice.