CIA pressured into linking Iraq to Al-Queda

[ou812]

Can't say I'm surprised really. There's been no tangable evidence that the two are linked...............

and it pisses me off that our government tries to get us to think so.

TOP DOWN: Analysts claim that the drive from the Bush administration to connect Saddam's regime with al-Qaeda was so great they exaggerated the evidence

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Monday, Mar 24, 2003,Page 4

"On topics of very intense concern to the administration of the day, you become less of an analyst and more of a reports officer."

US intelligence official

The recent disclosure that reports claiming Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger were based partly on forged documents has renewed complaints among analysts at the CIA about the way intelligence related to Iraq has been handled, several intelligence officials said.

Some analysts at the agency said they had felt pressured to make their intelligence reports on Iraq conform to Bush administration policies.

For months, a few CIA analysts have privately expressed concerns to colleagues and congressional officials that they have faced pressure in writing intelligence reports to emphasize links between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda.

As the White House contended that links between Saddam and al-Qaeda justified military action against Iraq, these analysts complained that reports on Iraq have attracted unusually intense scrutiny from senior policy makers within the Bush administration.

"A lot of analysts have been upset about the way the Iraq-al-Qaeda case has been handled," said one intelligence official familiar with the debate.

That debate was renewed after the disclosure two weeks ago by Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the claim that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger was based partly on forged documents. The claim had been cited publicly by US President George W. Bush.

"The forgery heightened people's feelings that they were being embarrassed by the way Iraqi intelligence has been handled," said one government official who said he has talked with CIA analysts about the issue.

The forged documents were not created by the CIA or any other US government agency, and CIA officials were always suspicious of the documents, American intelligence officials said. But the information still ended up being used in public by Bush.

Intelligence officials said there was other information, which was deemed to be credible, that raised concerns about a possible uranium-sale connection between Niger and Iraq.

Several analysts have told colleagues they have become so frustrated that they have considered leaving the agency, according to government officials who have talked with the analysts.

"Several people have told me how distraught they have been about what has been going on," said one government official who said he had talked with several CIA analysts. None of the analysts are willing to talk directly to news organizations, the official said.

A senior official of the agency said no analysts had told CIA management that they were resigning in protest over the handling of Iraqi intelligence. At the US State Department, by contrast, three foreign service officers have resigned in protest over Bush's policies.

The official said some analysts had been frustrated that they had frequently been asked the same questions by officials from throughout the government about their intelligence reports concerning Iraq. Many of these questions concern sourcing, the official said.

The official said that the analysts had not been pressured to change the substance of their reports.

"As we have become an integral component informing the debate for policy-makers, we have been asked a lot of questions," the senior CIA official said. "I'm sure it does come across as a pressured environment for analysts. I think there is a sense of being overworked, a sense among analysts that they have already answered the same questions. But if you talk to analysts, they understand why people are asking, and why policy-makers aren't accepting a report at face value."

Another intelligence official said, however, that many veteran analysts were comparing the current climate at the agency to that of the early 1980s, when some CIA analysts complained that they were under pressure from then president Ronald Reagan's administration to take a harder line on intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union.

The official said the pressure had prompted the agency's analysts to become more circumspect in expressing their analytical views in the intelligence reports they produced.

"On topics of very intense concern to the administration of the day, you become less of an analyst and more of a reports officer," the official said.

The distinction between an analyst and a reports officer is an important one within the CIA. A reports officer generally pulls together information in response to questions and specific requests for information. An intelligence analyst analyzes the information in finished reports.

[igloo]

Al Qaeda’s Opening Shot in Iraq War

DEBKAfile Military-Intelligence Exclusive

Saturday night, February 8, in the Iraqi-Kurdish city of Suleimaniyeh, al Qaeda and Iraqi military intelligence fired their first shot of the US-Iraq war - by assassination. They used their shared surrogate, the extremist Kurdish Ansar al-Islam of northeast Iraq, to eliminate the top command of the pro-American Patriotic Union of Iraqi Kurdistan’s fighting militia.

The three-way collaboration between Baghdad, al Qaeda and the Kurdish fundamentalist terrorists provided a live and incontrovertible smoking gun. The price was heavy, a grave setback for US war plans.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts compare the murders to the assassination of the Afghan Northern Alliance commander Shah Massoud two days before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Then, the killers posed as journalists; this time, they pretended to be defectors.

Ansar al Islam, which has been fighting the PUK for two years and whose members trained in Afghanistan, used double agents to convince the Kurdish commanders of this strategic northeastern corner of Iraq that top Ansar commanders were willing to defect. The defectors, it was promised, would bring fresh evidence of the collaboration between Iraqi military intelligence and al Qaeda.

The offer came just after secretary of state Colin Powell spoke of this collaboration at his Security Council presentation of America’s case against Iraq on February 5. According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the Ansar offer was relayed to officers of the US special forces and CIA working alongside the PUK militia. According to some local sources, the Ansar intermediaries also offered to produce captive Iraqi military agents or al Qaeda operatives as hostages.

Suleimaniyah, the hub town of eastern Kurdistan, is also the headquarters of the PUK high command in the region. It is ruled by the PUK leader Jalal Talabani, who has been short-listed in Washington for the post of Iraqi prime minister after Saddam Hussein’s ouster.

Suleimaniyeh also commands the highway from eastern Kurdistan to the important oil town of Kirkuk. The intermediaries’ choice of this city for the Ansar defection was intended to inspire trust. Any defectors guilty of treachery would be at the mercy of the PUK.

Believing they were safe, therefore, the top PUK commanders turned up to await the defectors. Instead of defecting, the Ansar arrivals pulled from their robes Kalashnikov assault guns and grenades. They killed Gen. Shawkat Haji Mushir, PUK leadership member, Hekmat Osman, security chief of the Sirwan district and Sardar Qafoor, military commander of the same district, as well as Sheik Kaffar Mustafa and three civilians. Mohamad Tawfiq, security chief of Halabja was seriously injured.

The Ansar killers used the noise and confusion to make their escape.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror experts note the features common to these murders and al Qaeda’s assassination of the legendary Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, by two suiciders who detonated bomb belts just two days before the Islamic terrorist network struck in New York and Washington. Today it is generally believed that al Qaeda, predicting America’s response to the terror attacks, struck in advance of the Afghanistan War to eliminate America’s most gifted and formidable military ally.

The wiping out the PUK high command in Suleimaniyeh has alerted Western counter-terror agencies to the possibility of its being the precursor for another massive al Qaeda strike against the United States or its allies. Al Qaeda has taken advantage of the presence of its operatives in a given territory to hit pro-American military leaders present in the same place. One such operative is Abu Musaab al Zarqawi, who is in charge of terrorist activity in Europe and the Middle East, as well as the worldwide distribution of the network’s stock of chemical, biological and radioactive weapons. It is therefore possible that the murder of the Kurdish commanders signals the next major al Qaeda outrage.

According to our sources, Ansar al-Islam is rife both with Zarqawi’s men and also Iraqi military intelligence officers, under the command Colonel Abu Wale. These officers have been training al Qaeda operatives in the use of forbidden weapons. In a special DEBKAfile report published on Saturday, February 8, the secret al Qaeda base for its joint operations with Iraqi military intelligence was revealed as being located in the town of Tajdori, 150 km northeast of Baghdad.

This joint enterprise and the al Qaeda-Iraqi activities among the Ansar have not been lost on US intelligence in northern Iraq. Before he was murdered, PUK commander, Gen. Mushir received heavy cannons for his militia, supplied by the Turkish army at the request of the Americans, for the purpose of mounting action to capture the Ansar enclave. This operation has meanwhile been called off.

[ou812]

That article doesn't say much igloo. It doesn't implicate Saddam having connections to Al-Queda.

Besides, this information was taken from an Israeli supported website from over a month and a 1/2 ago, I'm sure they're not trying to create propaganda.

Besides, if it were so..........why would the US use forged documents to imply a connection between Saddam and Al-Queda??? And that information is coming from the NY times, right from this country, not from an Israeli-supported. website.

[bigpoppanils]

wait...were not looking for al qaeda anymore....WMD's are the flavor of the month remember?

[igloo]

Originally posted by ou812

That article doesn't say much igloo. It doesn't implicate Saddam having connections to Al-Queda.

Besides, this information was taken from an Israeli supported website from over a month and a 1/2 ago, I'm sure they're not trying to create propaganda.

Besides, if it were so..........why would the US use forged documents to imply a connection between Saddam and Al-Queda??? And that information is coming from the NY times, right from this country, not from an Israeli-supported. website.

Are you expecting to find a picture of Saddam and UBL playing golf together??

Are you denying that Iraqi intelligence and Al-Qaeda are smart enough to use proxy forces, or that plausible deniability is foreign to Saddam Hussein?

And the NY Times is never wrong, right?... or would not love to embarass the Bush Administration in the name of "investigative" reporting?

You do not have to take the Israeli article as gospel, but at least open your eyes to how "intelligence" works....stop being fixated on "smoking guns"...leave that to the writers of Law & Order

[magellanmax]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

wait...were not looking for al qaeda anymore....WMD's are the flavor of the month remember?

Aint that the fucken truth..... When did the war against terrorism turn from Osama to Saddam?...I'm lost here guys, can somebody please enlighten me?...

and please note that none of the 9/11 assholes who killed innocent civilians was Iraqi.....

Is this a classic case of "Wag The Dog" ?

I think we have a bullseye target painted on our back for no concrete reason. Now we have to live in fear like the Israelis. Thanks alot president Bush.

[georgeacasta2]

Originally posted by magellanmax

Aint that the fucken truth..... When did the war against terrorism turn from Osama to Saddam?...I'm lost here guys, can somebody please enlighten me?...

and please note that none of the 9/11 assholes who killed innocent civilians was Iraqi.....

Is this a classic case of "Wag The Dog" ?

I think we have a bullseye target painted on our back for no concrete reason. Now we have to live in fear like the Israelis. Thanks alot president Bush.

[igloo]

Originally posted by magellanmax

Aint that the fucken truth..... When did the war against terrorism turn from Osama to Saddam?...I'm lost here guys, can somebody please enlighten me?...

and please note that none of the 9/11 assholes who killed innocent civilians was Iraqi.....

Is this a classic case of "Wag The Dog" ?

I think we have a bullseye target painted on our back for no concrete reason. Now we have to live in fear like the Israelis. Thanks alot president Bush.

:laugh:

Clueless

[underwater]

Originally posted by magellanmax

Aint that the fucken truth..... When did the war against terrorism turn from Osama to Saddam?...I'm lost here guys, can somebody please enlighten me?...

if you don't understand by now you are a lost cause....should have kept up with your current events magellanmax

[mrmatas2277]

Originally posted by magellanmax

I'm lost here guys, can somebody please enlighten me?...

i am gonna refrain from taking that opening...cuz ur new to the Current events board...

[vicman]

Originally posted by igloo

:laugh:

Clueless

:laugh:

Clueless