[Ninong]

They Never Tell the Truth About Anything!

It should come as no surprise that the same people who lied to go to war with Iraq would lie to go to war with Iran. The Cheney-Bush Criminal Gang have been pushing for an attack on Iran for the past three years now, which is why they were furious that the most recent NIE on Iran, which was completed in late 2006, concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program.

An earlier NIE on Iran that was completed in 2005 concluded that Iran was at least 10 years away from possessing any significant nuclear enrichment capability. That was in direct contrast to the 3-5 years being pushed by the Administration at the time. Cheney was furious that he was unable to get that changed in the 2005 NIE. Shortly thereafter, in early 2006, Cheney ordered the Defense Department to set up an Iranian Directorate, similar to the Office of Special Plans, to cook the intel on Iran.

What is disturbing about all of the reports leaking out about what was going on behind the scenes in the Bush administration is the revelation that it was Vice President Cheney who was calling the shots.

[For example: In this latest news we are being told that President Bush just learned about this last Wednesday but Vice President Cheney was briefed two weeks ago in the situation room. We all know that both of them have known this for months but the point I'm making here is that even the White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, has acknowledged that Cheney was briefed a full week before Bush. She doesn't find that unusual. Ha!]

This January 8, 2007 article by Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna confirmed what Seymour Hersh had been saying about the NIE on Iran since November 2006.

Excerpts:

The nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell to be Director of National Intelligence is part of an effort by the Vice President to tighten the Administration's grip on domestic intelligence and grease the wheels for a more aggressive stance towards Iran, current and former intelligence officials believe.

If confirmed, McConnell will replace current National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who was tapped Friday to become Deputy Secretary of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice. According to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, Negroponte's exit followed a lengthy internal administration battle between the Office of the Vice President and the two-year-old Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

According to officials close to both men, two issues surround Negroponte's departure and McConnell's nomination: a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iran -- which the White House could use to buttress a case for military force -- and pressure from the Vice President to augment domestic surveillance.

Negroponte had resisted both efforts. Tensions soared after Negroponte made a public statement last year that countered the administration position that Iran was an immediate threat and that its alleged nuclear weapons program was in an advanced stage.

"The NIE on Iran is at issue," said one former senior intelligence officer close to Negroponte.

The National Intelligence Estimate is an interagency report that synthesizes information across all intelligence agencies on a particular topic, providing an overall assessment and analysis. In private conversations with RAW STORY, current and former US intelligence officials from various agencies raised concerns with McConnell's appointment and its effect on the Iran NIE.

"McConnell will go along with whatever [Cheney tells him to do] and make sure that no objective NIE comes out," one former senior intelligence officer said.

A spokesman for the National Intelligence Director's Office, however, denied the Estimate would be affected.

"I don't have any reason to believe that the change with Mr. Negroponte and Admiral McConnell will delay the NIEs on Iran or Iraq at this point," spokesman Chad Colton said Sunday. The Iran Estimate is scheduled to be released some time this month.

All of the officials RAW STORY spoke with had reservations about Vice Admiral McConnell.

In a call Friday, President Reagan's Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council from 1984-1987 and Chief of Operations and Analysis at the Central CIA's Counterterrorism Center under President Bush Sr. Vincent Cannistraro called the nomination "a disaster."

Others said McConnell would follow the White House's direction.

"McConnell's not an effective manager" said former CIA officer Larry Johnson. "He will be likely to acquiesce to White House pressure on issues."

"McConnell was not Rummeyesque," Johnson added. "He doesn't have a clear vision. He's not a strong manager."

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran

Parts of an earlier Iran Intelligence Estimate were leaked to the Washington Post in 2005. These excerpts asserted that Iran was at least ten years away from possessing any significant nuclear enrichment capability and contrasted sharply with White House estimates, which had warned Iran could mount a full-scale attack in 3-5 years.

"The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House," the Post's Dafna Linzer reported. "Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal."

Negroponte defended the published findings, attempting to push back against pressure from the Vice President's office, and maintained his opposition to military action against Iran.

By March 2006, however, the Department of Defense -- on orders from the Vice President's Office -- had created the Iranian Directorate, which was largely a recreation of the notorious Office of Special Plans. The Office of Special Plans operated in the build-up to the Iraq war and is believed by most experts to have been the conduit through which pre-Iraq war intelligence was allegedly manipulated, if not cooked outright.

In a previous RAW STORY article on the Iranian Directorate, John Pike of Global Security -- a Washington-based intelligence clearinghouse -- said, "It was created to, as Dean Acheson urged Harry Truman, to scare hell out of the American people by making things a little bit clearer than the truth."

The creation of the Iran Directorate sharply undercut the Director of National Intelligence and what sources say were Negroponte's efforts to collect the most comprehensive and accurate intelligence on Iran and provide it directly to the President. The Office was created in 2005 by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act to centralize information coming out of all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
According to officials, Negroponte, while trying to work around interagency tensions, was not given the requisite authority to override pressure from Cheney's office.

In October, Negroponte publicly cautioned against the use of force with regard to Iran, telling President Bush that because of "technical errors" in Iran's nuclear program, the situation was not an emergency.

Domestic Surveillance

The other key area of concern for the intelligence community in McConnell's nomination is the Executive Branch's attempt to expand domestic surveillance programs, especially those conducted by the National Security Agency.

Current and former intelligence officials say that Negroponte and his staff were not comfortable with the level of domestic surveillance or the use of NSA wiretaps that were being pushed by the White House.

"[The office of the Vice President] could not get Negroponte to do anything with NSA and domestic surveillance," said one former senior intelligence official. "McConnell worked with Cheney during the Gulf War."

"He is not competent, but he is someone they can control," the official added.

None of the intelligence sources would describe what types of programs were at issue or confirm if these programs were those already known to the public. But they emphasized that compared to Negroponte, McConnell would be much more willing to accommodate the White House position on domestic surveillance.

You can read the rest here.

P.S. -- In spite of the reservations expressed in that January 2007 article, the NIE on Iran that was completed in November 2006 was finally published this week. It may be a year late but the fact that the conclusions reached in that report directly contradict everything the administration has been saying about Iran for the past year is proof that there are people in our government, at least those in charge of national intelligence, who are unwilling to be partners to criminal deception of the American people any longer.

No doubt the NIE on Iran has been revised and updated over the past 12 months since it was originally finished but the conclusions that were so unacceptable to Cheney are still in there and they have been known at the highest levels of government for the past year.

This story has the potential to become explosive depending on what comes out about what the President knew and when he stopped knowing it.

[Ninong]

Today the media is making a big deal over what DNI Mike McConnell told Bush and Cheney in August about the NIE on Iran. That's beside the point. We already know what former DNI John Negroponte told them back in November 2006. That's when Bush and Cheney were given the outlines of the NIE on Iran and that's when Cheney decided to block it and have Negroponte replaced.

Cheney has been trying all year to get the NIE on Iran reworked to fit in with his agenda just as he twisted the intel on Iraq to justify the invasion of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and no WMD program.

Isn't it ironic that the Cheney-Bush Criminal Gang invaded Iraq in March 2003 supposedly because Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons while both North Korea and Iran did have active nuclear weapons programs at the time but managed to avoid invasion?

P.S. -- The media is now asking why the Bush administration can't get it's story straight.

Monday: National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said the President knew about the intelligence in August or September.

Tuesday: The President said he didn't know what the intelligence said until he was briefed last week. He said that when DNI Mike McConnell talked to him back in August about startling new information on Iran's nuclear program he didn't bother to ask McConnell anything about this shocking new development. Of course not, he had already known about it since November 2006.

Wednesday: White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said the President was briefed in August.

The question remains: What did the President know and when did he stop knowing it?

In case you're too young to catch that, it's a joke that was making the rounds back during the final months of the Nixon administration.

[Ninong]

The White House should just admit that Bush lied. Again.

Bush is still insisting that he first learned about the conclusions in the NIE on Iran last Wednesday.

Let's review to see how incredible that statement really is:

According to press reports, Bush personally briefed Israeli PM Olmert on the Iran NIE last Monday, two days before he claims to have known about it.

The White House has acknowledged that Vice President Cheney was briefed in the situation room a full two weeks ago. In order to believe Bush, we must believe that Cheney said nothing to him about this startling new development for a whole week.

Both Stephen Hadley and Dana Perino have stated that Bush was informed about the new Iran NIE back in August by DNI Mike McConnell. Bush admits that McConnell told him back in August that they had new information on Iran that they were still checking out that could result in changes to their previous beliefs about Iran's nuclear weapons program. Bush insists that he did not ask McConnell to explain what he was talking about.

Remember this: McConnell personally briefs Bush almost every morning on national security matters. Every morning! Bush expects us to believe that not once since last August has he asked McConnell about the NIE on Iran and not once since last August has McConnell said anything to him about it. Not once!

Yeah, right!

P.S. -- It could be that McConnell was scared to death to raise the topic because he knew he was under the gun from both Cheney and Bush to come up with a new & improved NIE on Iran that did NOT say that Iran no longer had an active nuclear weapons program.

And why does Bush continue to mispronounce nuclear as nukyular? He does it to show his contempt for anyone with an IQ above room temperature and to rub it in that as dumb as he is, he still managed to become President of the United States thanks in large part to the morons on the religious right.


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"I always tell Condi Rice, 'I want to remind you, Madam Secretary, who has the Ph.D. and who was the C student. And I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is.'" -- George W. Bush, Lancaster, PA, October 3, 2007.

[Ninong]

Recap:

DNI John Negroponte advised Bush and Cheney back in October or November 2006 of the conclusions in the new NIE on Iran that was scheduled to be released in January 2007. (P.S. -- This NIE was actually completed in October 2006 and could have been released then but the Bush administration wanted it held until after the November 2006 elections.)

Cheney was furious!

Negroponte was replaced by Mike McConnell.

Cheney blocked the January 2007 release of the NIE on Iran.

In August 2007, McConnell informed Bush and Cheney that the NIE on Iran was going to be published and that its conclusions were unchanged.

Cheney lost the battle to change the report or to keep it bottled up forever. The best he could manage was to delay its release until now.

How did Cheney lose?

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are opposed to military action against Iran. They have made their views known to Congress.

The new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is opposed to military action against Iran.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is opposed to military action against Iran.

It's possible that given all of that, the intelligence community was just not willing to go along with Cheney's pressure to cook the books any longer.

Remember how almost everybody at Justice and the FBI threatened to resign over the NSA thing? Maybe Gates and Rice and McConnell threatened to resign if the new NIE on Iran wasn't released? Maybe they didn't want to be part of a campaign of deception leading to another war under false pretenses?

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

And why does Bush continue to mispronounce nuclear as nukyular?

Maybe he's trying to confuse everyone?