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The Bush administration and the price of loyalty
By Bradford Plumer
In a recent interview with Mary Jacoby, Seymour Hersh conjectures that those forged Niger documents originally came from government officials trying to undermine the case for war:
Q: Do you have any idea of the origin of the forged Niger documents that Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Iraq was seeking uranium to make nuclear weapons?
A: I don't really know. I know that they think it was an inside job. And my idea is that there were people in the government who knew that you could give [the neoconservatives] anything, and within three days, if it said the right thing, there would be a principals meeting [of the senior foreign policy officials] at the White House on it. And one idea would be to get them in a position where they really walked on their dongs, in a way. Give them some bad stuff. They'd have a big meeting about it and [the neocons] would finally be exposed as ludicrous. Nobody anticipated that [the forged documents] would end up in the State of the Union address. I mean, it's beyond belief. I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, about [Michael] Ledeen [a neocon operative] and these things. He's too smart for that. Because it was designed to be caught.
You can believe Hersh's theory, or you can believe that the documents had something to do with the back channel set up with Iranian businessmen and Italian intelligence by Michael Ledeen and a few Iran hawks in the government. (Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen are trying to get to the bottom of this, so stay tuned.) Either way, though, the Bush administration appears to be facing a mini-revolt within its ranks. For this, blame secrecy.
Critics of the Clinton administration will recall that the Pentagon and White House during the '90s were characterized by public feuds and bitter spats -- most famously the nasty disagreements over Bosnia that led to Wesley Clark's dismissal. Leaks and loudmouth dissenters became a mainstay. The whole atmosphere was circus-like, yes, and it may have cost Clark his political career, but that's about it.
The Bush administration's obsession with secrecy, loyalty, and "staying on message," meanwhile, seems to have spurred its dissenters to go to drastic lengths to voice their disapproval. Competent officials like Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke have simply quit the administration, becoming die-hard critics of the administration. And now we find that Pentagon staffers, unable to air their views in private, had decided to produce phony intelligence, or to share information with Israeli lobbyists, or both.
- Bradford Plumer
By Bradford Plumer
In a recent interview with Mary Jacoby, Seymour Hersh conjectures that those forged Niger documents originally came from government officials trying to undermine the case for war:
Q: Do you have any idea of the origin of the forged Niger documents that Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Iraq was seeking uranium to make nuclear weapons?
A: I don't really know. I know that they think it was an inside job. And my idea is that there were people in the government who knew that you could give [the neoconservatives] anything, and within three days, if it said the right thing, there would be a principals meeting [of the senior foreign policy officials] at the White House on it. And one idea would be to get them in a position where they really walked on their dongs, in a way. Give them some bad stuff. They'd have a big meeting about it and [the neocons] would finally be exposed as ludicrous. Nobody anticipated that [the forged documents] would end up in the State of the Union address. I mean, it's beyond belief. I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, about [Michael] Ledeen [a neocon operative] and these things. He's too smart for that. Because it was designed to be caught.
You can believe Hersh's theory, or you can believe that the documents had something to do with the back channel set up with Iranian businessmen and Italian intelligence by Michael Ledeen and a few Iran hawks in the government. (Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen are trying to get to the bottom of this, so stay tuned.) Either way, though, the Bush administration appears to be facing a mini-revolt within its ranks. For this, blame secrecy.
Critics of the Clinton administration will recall that the Pentagon and White House during the '90s were characterized by public feuds and bitter spats -- most famously the nasty disagreements over Bosnia that led to Wesley Clark's dismissal. Leaks and loudmouth dissenters became a mainstay. The whole atmosphere was circus-like, yes, and it may have cost Clark his political career, but that's about it.
The Bush administration's obsession with secrecy, loyalty, and "staying on message," meanwhile, seems to have spurred its dissenters to go to drastic lengths to voice their disapproval. Competent officials like Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke have simply quit the administration, becoming die-hard critics of the administration. And now we find that Pentagon staffers, unable to air their views in private, had decided to produce phony intelligence, or to share information with Israeli lobbyists, or both.
- Bradford Plumer
posted by BLONDIE at 1:15 PM
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