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Extra-Legal Methods May Be Used To Keep Bush In Power
(Online Exclusive of Democracy Now, June 3, 2004)
... 27-Year CIA Vet Ray McGovern On George Tenet's Surprise Resignation . . . RAY MCGOVERN: George Tenet is clearly the first sacrificial lamb here. Things are going quite badly here in Washington. Somebody has to start being held accountable. And Tenet is sort of a tragic figure because he did all he could to help George Bush, much more than he should have as an objective intelligence professional. . . . You know, when the president, according to Bob Woodward, at the end of the year, at the end of 2002 said, you know I'm not sure, is this all you've got in terms of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction? Is it a good case? Well George Tenet sprung up twice and said, Mr. President, it's a slam-dunk. Now we know he did that because Ms. Condoleeza Rice has verified that. Now, this is just a startling example, of what's not supposed to happen in intelligence. You don't tell the president what he wants to know. You tell him the truth. And that seems to have been avoided here in Washington these days. . . . This firing is simply the first sacrificial victim here. They don't want to get rid of Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz yet. There's lots of dirty stuff having to do with CIA interrogations in Iraq as well as military interrogations. So there's a whole litany of things that George Tenet is very vulnerable on, and I think this is throwing one person in to the fray here and say, well at least we got rid of George Tenet. He's a tragic figure. I feel sorry for him but I do not defend what he has done to the intelligence community because the folks there are thoroughly demoralized. The ethic that we all worked by, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free, you know that's carved into the marble at the entrance to CIA headquarters. That seems to have been just completely rescinded from under the reign of George Tenet. . . . You not only had Dick Cheney, you had people like Newt Gingrich for Pete's sake. You had Colin Powell bragging about the fact that he spent four days and nights at CIA headquarters before his key speech on 5 February 2003. This is bizarre. If by that time the CIA did not have together a conclusive case to present to Colin Powell for him to present to the UN, it's bizarre that he had to show up there and help along the analysts. This is not the way things are done. . . . [If I am Bush,] four more years becomes even more important to me and to Ashcroft and to Rumsfeld. Gonzalez specifically warns that who knows, some future administration or some future group might sue you for violating the Geneva Conventions. And not only the Geneva Conventions but to the degree that they are embedded in this US law of 1996, and so you're really, we have a strong basis in law but we can't exclude the possibility. So four more years? Why do I say all this? I say all this because I am more frightened now than at any time over the last three and a half years, that this administration will resort to extra-legal methods to do something to ensure that there are four more years for George Bush. And Ashcroft's statement last week, gratuitous statement, uncoordinated with the department of CIA, with the Department of Homeland Security, his warning that there is bound to be a terrorist strike before the US elections. That can be viewed, and this can be reasonably viewed, as the opening salvo in the justification for doing, taking measures to ensure that whatever happens in November comes out so that four more years can be devoted to maybe changing that war crimes act or protecting at least these vulnerable people for four more years. . . . The folks that were running Chalabi or vice versa as the case may be that is, the folks that were being run by Chalabi, were the Neo-cons who are responsible for the fix that this country is in now in Iraq. They groomed him and they went out drinking with him, and I can easily believe the story that was printed in the press yesterday that one of them got a little too potted. Intelligence officers often, sometimes are guilty of the same fault, but you like to brag a little and somebody told Chalabi, you know those Iranians, we've got ‘em pegged, we've got their communications and we can read everything they're saying. Chalabi goes and tells the Iranian in Baghdad and the fool puts that message on the same code as has been broken. And so the CIA and NSA now has no doubt is a transcript of Chalabi saying, this is what I learned from, and there's a good chance that there might be a name in there. And one can guess about five people who may have told him that. And most of them, yeah most of them reside in the Pentagon. So what we have here is very very damaging proof that A), Chalabi was always to be distrusted, and B), that the people that were in association with him and brought him in with US aircraft right when the war was over so to speak, those people are really playing fast and loose with US intelligence, with US interests, all out of their very blind devotion to this fellow who is going to deliver their objectives to them by being a subservient head of Iraq and not incidentally, establishing ties with Israel. . . . I mean the twin aim of this neo-conservative so-called cabal was this. You can read it in their documents. First and foremost it was the strategic vision, the ideological vision, that the US is the sole remaining superpower in the world and this imposes some sort of obligation on the US to throw its weight around wherever it can, and particularly in strategic areas where there's lots of oil. God knows we need the oil. Okay, that's number one. Number two is that the only threat to Israel's security that needed to be dealt with in Israeli eyes was the impossible threat that Saddam Hussein may have had one or two scuds left, scud missiles which could rain chemical weapons, chemical agents down on Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

posted by Lorenzo 3:09 PM