Ron Suskind on his new book about BushCo inventing evidence.

August 5, 2008 by Dusty · Leave a Comment

From the wonderful folks over at Crooks and Liars we have Suskind on the Today show talking about his new book entitled: The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. The book has some new findings, per C&L:

It has some explosive information about the White House’s plan to forge documents to persuade the American public that we should attack Iraq. This is incredible stuff. Suskind appeared on the TODAY show and gave his first interview about it…He says it’s “one of the great lies in modern political history.”

Exact quotes from pp. 369-372 of Suskind’s book are in bold print below:

In the months before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, British intelligence had secret meetings in Amman, Jordan, with Habbush, chief of Saddam’s intelligence network. Habbush demanded a safe way out, if-and-when the U.S. invaded. Habbush repeatedly told the British that Saddam had no WMD; all programs had ended in the 1990’s; and the book says the Bush White House didn’t want to hear it - and didn’t want to hear more reports on what Habbush was saying.

The U.S. invaded in March ‘03. Habbush was ready. He slipped out of Baghdad with the help of U.S. intelligence and into Amman…

In October ‘03, CIA paid Habbush $5 million as part of his resettlement. By then, the White House had finally thought of a way to use Habbush. … 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 operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda… The letter also mentioned suspicious shipments to Iraq from Niger set up with al Qaeda’s assistance. The idea was to take the letter to Habbush and have him transcribe it in his own neat handwriting on a piece of Iraqi government stationery, to make it look legitimate. CIA would then take the finished product to Baghdad and have someone release it to the media.

Even five years later, (Rob Richer, who worked in CIA for 30 years and was in charge of “clandestine ops” in the Middle East-now working as an executive at Blackwater USA and in line to be CEO of Blackwater according to this book) remembers looking down at the creamy White House stationery on which the assignment was written. “The guys from the Vice President’s office were just barraging us in this period with one thing after another: Run down this lead, find out about that. It was nonstop. Of course, this was different. This was creating a deception.” Richer passed the directive down the chain, to the Iraq Operations Group. ((IOG was a CIA team co-led by John Maguire, clearly also a source for Suskind))

…”When it was discussed with me, I just thought it was incredible,” Maguire recalls. “A box-checking of all outstanding issues in one letter, from one guy.”

…Suskind is NOT able to report exactly how it was done, whether Habbush himself definitely did it, but reports what you can find through Google searches: The Sunday Telegraph reported the letter; it caused a sensation. Suskind does report that Richer remembers George Tenet passing to him the White House’s orders to concoct that letter. Suskind asserts that it’s an apparently illegal act, to forge or concoct that fake letter to Saddam.:

Under a 1991 amendment to the statutes that in 1947 created CIA and that govern its actions, there is a passage that reads, “No covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media.” The operation created by the White House and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with those statutory requirements. …It is not the sort of offense that brings jail time. It is much broader than that… the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”