Democrats Subvert War Intelligence (Remember "The Treason Memo"?)

Insight On The News ^ | J. Michael Waller | Dec. 22, 2003

[Sam Hill]

Investigative Report
Democrats Subvert War Intelligence

Posted Dec. 22, 2003

By J. Michael Waller

Mellon, above, is using his position as Democrat staff chief on the Senate intelligence panel to undermine the leadership of Rumsfeld, Feith and Bolton.

It's one of the unsolved political mysteries of 2003: Exactly who drew up the plan for Democrats to abuse the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq?

The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, into approving probes that in actuality would be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon. The authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials." According to a staff memo, the committee then would release the information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, "among other things, castigate the majority [Republicans] for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."

In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo.

The plan, made public by Fox News on Nov. 6, went like this: "Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time - but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be [in 2004]."

Even before the memo was written, Rockefeller's staff already was off on its own, well outside the traditional bipartisan channels. According to the memo, the "FBI Niger investigation" of reports that Saddam Hussein's regime had tried to buy uranium from West Africa "was done solely at the request of the vice chairman."

The plan wrecked more than two-and-a-half decades of unique bipartisanship on the SSCI, whose job is to oversee the CIA and the rest of the nation's intelligence services. In fact the SSCI, according to the Wall Street Journal after the revelation, was "one of the last redoubts of peaceful coexistence in Congress." But that bipartisanship ended last year when Democrats demanded that the committee staff be split. Instead of reporting directly to the chairman, it now was bifurcated, with Republicans answering to the GOP chairman and Democrats working for the Democratic vice chairman. Roberts didn't like the change, warning at the time that the Democrats wanted to divide the committee into "partisan camps." But the Republicans caved and the staff director of the Democrats, Christopher Mellon, built his own autonomous apparatus.

Insight has pieced together how the Democrats' fishing expedition worked. According to insiders, Mellon, a former Clinton administration official, is part of a network of liberal operatives within the Pentagon and CIA who reportedly are seeking to discredit and politically disable some of the nation's most important architects of the war on terrorism and their efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into terrorist hands. Mellon already was a SSCI staffer when the Clinton administration tapped him to work as a deputy to the assistant secretary of defense for C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence), where he was responsible for security and information operations. In the C3I office, where he held a civilian rank equivalent to a three-star general, Mellon worked on intelligence-policy issues, or in the words of a former colleague, Cheryl J. Roby, "things like personnel, training and recruiting for intelligence." The office is under the purview of the undersecretary of defense for policy, a post now held by conservative Douglas J. Feith.

Clinton-era personnel reforms allowed officials of his administration to burrow into vital Pentagon posts as careerists, administration officials say, where they have been maneuvering to keep Bush loyalists out of key positions and/or undermine their authority while pushing their own political agendas that run contrary to those of the president. This network, Insight has discovered, extends to the Pentagon's outer reaches such as the National Defense University and far-flung academic and influential policy think tanks, or "CINC tanks," serving the commanders ("CINCs") of the U.S. military theaters around the world [see "Clinton Undead Haunting Pentagon," June 17, 2002].

Senate and Department of Defense (DoD) colleagues say Mellon has a beef against Feith and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under whom he served briefly until the new Bush administration made its full transition into office. Intelligence sources say he tried to keep conservatives out of key Pentagon posts and to undermine tough antiterrorism policies after 9/11. Back at the SSCI, Mellon's chief targets for criticism have been Feith and his like-minded State Department colleague, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who holds the nonproliferation portfolio. Both Feith and Bolton are strong supporters of President Bush's advocacy of "regime change" for rogue states and are considered to be among the most faithful advocates in the administration of his personal policy positions.

DoD civilians loyal to the president have complained for more than two years about Mellon, both while he was at the Pentagon and at his new perch in the Senate. Upon his return to the SSCI, bipartisan staff cooperation broke down almost completely. "The parties aren't talking to one another," according to a committee source. After the memo became public, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) ordered an end to cooperation with the Democrats on the Iraq investigations.

Mellon's public record doesn't indicate any hard-core partisan leanings, showing instead a bipartisanship as a sometime floater on the liberal Republican side. Federal Election Commission records show he donated $1,000 to the George H.W. Bush re-election campaign in 1993 and $1,000 to the Republican National Committee in 1992. In his first tour on the Senate intelligence committee, he served as an appointee of the late liberal Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) when George Tenet, a Democrat who now is director of the CIA, was committee staff director. Mellon then took the C3I post at the Pentagon when William Cohen, the liberal Republican senator from Maine, became secretary of defense for Clinton.

So what might have motivated Mellon to become involved in the memo scandal to politicize the intelligence committee against the current president? Mellon did not return Insight calls for comment.

Asked whether Mellon wrote the plan, Rockefeller's spokeswoman Wendy Morigi did not attempt to exonerate the staff director. "The senator has not stated who the author of that memo is," Morigi said, "and I don't think he intends to." She spoke with Rockefeller and then called Insight again to say Sen. Rockefeller would not comment.

In any case Rockefeller, a strong liberal who had enjoyed a reputation of bipartisanship on committee matters, surprised colleagues when he allowed the Democrats on the committee staff

to use the supersecret body as a political weapon. Sources with firsthand knowledge say that Rockefeller broke the committee's bipartisan custom of requesting information from government agencies over the signatures of the chairman, representing the majority party, and the vice chairman, representing the minority.

"Rockefeller sent out his own request for information - the first time a request to the administration for information was not signed by both the chairman and vice chairman of the committee," according to a source involved with the requests. The source says the requests were worded in ways designed to elicit specific answers of a sensitive nature. When the senior Pentagon and State Department officials answered the requests, Democrats on the intelligence committee "leaked it, though some of it was top secret," the source said without citing examples.

When the targeted officials caught on to the game, Senate Democrats led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a scrappy SSCI member, denounced them for failure to provide Democrat senators with information about the war. They publicly acted outraged at what they alleged was a certain deception and demanded even more information, telling the press that top Bush officials were forcing the CIA and other intelligence agencies to skew intelligence analysis to fit a preconceived conclusion.

Some Democrats see through this political warfare and are troubled by it. Keeping the SSCI and its House counterpart nonpartisan, wrote former senator Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.) in the New York Post in the midst of the memo controversy, "is vital for the nation's security because much of what is done to collect, process and disseminate intelligence needed by civilian and military leaders is done under conditions of rigorously regulated secrecy." Kerrey is a former vice chairman of the committee.

"Of all the committees, this is the one single committee that should unquestionably be above partisan politics," said an angry Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.). "The information it deals with should never, never be distorted, compromised or politicized in any shape, form or fashion. For it involves the lives of our soldiers and our citizens. Its actions should always be above reproach; its words never politicized."

Rockefeller defended his staff and the outrageous document itself, calling it a "private memo that nobody saw except me and the staff people that wrote it for me." He rebuffed calls from Frist, Miller and others that the staffers responsible be exposed, let alone fired, and instead accused Republicans of stealing the document from his aides' computers. "Mr. Rockefeller refuses to denounce the memo, which he says was unauthorized and written by staffers. If that's the case, at the very least some heads ought to roll," declared the Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Firing Mellon as the staff director for the culprits, the Journal said, would be "a good place to start."

Miller went even further: "I have often said that the process in Washington is so politicized and polarized that it can't even be put aside when we're at war. Never has that been proved more true than the highly partisan and perhaps treasonous memo prepared for the Democrats on the intelligence committee."

The Georgia Democrat measured his words, continuing: "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both - should be dealt with quickly and severely, sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused."

Chairman Roberts sees a danger to the nation through such politics: "If we give in to the temptation to exploit our good offices for political gain, we cannot expect our intelligence professionals to entrust us with our nation's most sensitive information. You can be sure that foreign intelligence services will stop cooperating with our intelligence agencies the first time they see their secrets appear in our media."

Kerrey, once a shining star among Senate Democrats, wrote, "The production of a memo by an employee of a Democratic member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is an example of the destructive side of partisan politics. That it probably emerged as a consequence of an increasingly partisan environment in Washington and may have been provoked by equally destructive Republican acts is neither a comfort nor a defensible rationalization."

Senate Majority Leader Frist called for the culprits to come forward and apologize, angrily announcing he would suspend cooperation on the Iraq investigation. That wasn't enough for Sen. Miller, who demanded, "Heads should roll!"

J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight magazine.

For more, read text of the Democrats' "treason" memo.

[Sam Hill]

Democrat Document: Text of the 'Treason' Memo

Posted Dec. 22, 2003

Our plan is as follows:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard. For example, in addition to the president's State of the Union speech, the chairman has agreed to look at the activities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department. The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and co-signs our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. (Note: We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.)

2) Assiduously prepare Democratic "additional views" to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it. In that regard, we have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims and contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an independent commission (i.e. the Corzine amendment).

3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time - but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year either:

A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report - thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public: 1) additional views on the interim report; 2) announcement of our independent investigation; and 3) additional views on the final investigation; or

B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue. We could attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the "use" of intelligence.

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman; we have independently submitted written questions to DoD [Department of Defense]; and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

Summary

Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading - if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives - of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, pre-emptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives and methods.

[WarPaint]

Bump to read later, but just skimming through... unfreakinbelievable

[leadpenny]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Looks like Mellon was a one-man sleeper cell.

[Archon of the East]

I just hope Fitz is investigating the real treason in this country.

[MamaLucci]

I hope to God that Fitzgerald has armed body guards..............he is also investigating the rampant corruption in Chicago politics. Needless to say, Ritchie Daley, AKA Da Mayor, isn't sleeping too soundly at night.

[Sam Hill]

"The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, into approving probes that in actuality would be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon. The authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials." According to a staff memo, the committee then would release the information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, "among other things, castigate the majority [Republicans] for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."

In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo."

[aynrandfreak]

I hate the Left.

[leadpenny]

There was a movie titled, "A Simple Plan."


I believe those characters got caught too.

[leftcoaster]

Roberts was correct that allowing both parties to run their own separate apparatus would lead to more partisanship.

If it is one group that works for the committee, each worker, regardless of their personal affiliations, will have incentive to make sure each party is served; otherwise they lose their job the next time the minority party become the majority.

As it is operating now, they will keep their jobs in a change of power and will continue to work for their party bosses. Since the other party will never hire them, they have incentive to work for their party, and not their country.

[digger48]

We can only hope they'll shoot each other in this one too.

[leadpenny]

LOL, I had forgotten the details.

Going to allmovie.com for a refresher. Money in a crashed airplane as I remember.

[26lemoncharlie]

It seems as though the Socialist are attacking with the intent to undermine the US Constitution and do away with our Liberties. It is our DUTY as US Citizens to DO something about this, to take action and defend the US Constitution and our liberties.

What Civil organization exists that will ensure that the Arrogant Government Officials will NOT Violate the US Constitution? It seems that all of the existing orgs have been infiltrated with traitors who control our Civil authorities. I guess I'm looking for the "The Three Mousketeers" or the "Son's of Liberty" !!

[Sam Hill]

Has anybody ever established when this memo was composed?

The timing with regard to Wilson and the Johnson/McGovern types is awfully suspicious.

[Archon of the East]

I'm sure him and his investigation's are well protected. He certainly is taking on some real "machines" though isn't he.

[Sam Hill]

"What Civil organization exists that will ensure that the Arrogant Government Officials will NOT Violate the US Constitution?"

Certainly not the America-hating ACLU, which has already come forward to defend Joe Wilson and has offered to help any other people who are willing to lie to hurt our war effort--even if they have to break the law to do it.

[Just mythoughts]

Now let us also recall that this same committee claims that Joe Wilson's woman is the one who sent him to Niger via CIA.

I do not believe that this woman originated the idea. The liberals on this committee have not taken Joe Wilson to the woodshed for this supposed lie, that is all I need to know that on this point, Joe Wilson is probably telling the truth.

[Archon of the East]

I think it's worse than that Lem, I believe most of these organizations were in fact created for the single purpose of undermining the US Constitution whether it be that specific end or because their greed would benefit from an America without constitution. But certainly no one can argue that elites are hell bent on taking away self Government from the people, or should I say hope of self Govt. Like I have always said I have my knickers pressed and just waiting for the call so to speak.

[AndyJackson]

The Georgia Democrat measured his words, continuing: "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin.

What is measured about that? Sounds like the straightforward tell the truth let the chips fall where they may Zell we have all come to know and love.

[Enchante]

These people are scum. I'm sure this loathsome memo grew out of the same swamp that Joe Wilson and the Senate Democratic Policy Committee were wallowing in..... would bet that Mellon and pals were deeply involved in the discussions with Joe Wilson and others in May 2003 and probably long before. These a-holes have gone way way beyond being any "loyal opposition".....

"...Mellon, a former Clinton administration official, is part of a network of liberal operatives within the Pentagon and CIA who reportedly are seeking to discredit and politically disable some of the nation's most important architects of the war on terrorism..."

[MamaLucci]

He certainly is taking on some real "machines" though isn't he.

Yes, he is. And for that we can thank former Illinois state Senator, Peter Fitgerald.....(No relation, BTW).

[Just mythoughts]

"I'm sure this loathsome memo grew out of the same swamp that Joe Wilson and the Senate Democratic Policy Committee were wallowing in....."

I always thought the "memo" had a Hillry flare about it, considering she cut her political teeth on that subcommittee trying to figure out how to impeach Nixon.

[Alia]

Good job!

[Popman]

Bookmarked

[mosquitobite]

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman; we have independently submitted written questions to DoD [Department of Defense]; and we are preparing further independent requests for information. Memo comes out at the beginning of November. Wonder when it was written?

[John Lenin]

Bush has let a lot bad things the RATS have done slide by. My guess is the RATS (Clinton's) are holding them hostage , Bubba treatened to take the whole government down if he got impeached. The country will not survive if that's the case, it is time to call their bluff and bury them right along with the whole mess.

[processing please hold]

Take a look at this link.

Here

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FReepers on the thread also bring up Wilson.

[Laverne]

Bump....the last I heard about this memo, was a response I received from Senator Shelby to my question to him on CSPAN Morning Journal (way back when)....The memo had been referred to the ethics committee. Where did it go from there? Perhaps indeed this is part of Fitzgerald's investigation...

[Enchante]

What would be crucial info to obtain - would probably require not only many subpoenas but also FBI raids to seize documents and emails, etc. - is what kinds of coordination have gone on behind the scenes between 'Rats on the Hill, MSM outlets such as NY Times and 60 Minutes, etc., and the various unsavory characters like Joe Wilson, Bill Burkett, Richard Clarke, et al who tried to have a campaign of scandals leading up to the 2004 election. There are a variety of crimes involved, if only the GJ looking at Plame-gate would cast their net wider. This outrageous memo is just one (important) piece in the much larger picture, which you are doing much to illuminate!

P.S. Found this interesting piece (link below) about how 60 Minutes bumped a story they had prepared on the forged documents re: Niger uranium to air their pathetic "Rathergate" piece with the forged TANG documents!!! They never did run the one on the Niger uranium forgeries - guess once they got embroiled in Rathergate they lost their appetite for talking about forged documents! Has anyone looked at whether there could be any connection(s) between the origins of both sets of forgeries??? There has been talk that the Niger uranium forgeries originated in the USA and were released in Italy to put them into 'circulation' - could there be any relation between TWO sets of forgeries (Niger and TANG) designed to harm the Bush 2004 campaign???

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092504I.shtml

[processing please hold]

I haven't heard a thing about the memo till now. Someone buried it deep.

I hope Fitzgerald has it on his radar.

[processing please hold]

Good story, thanks for the link. Odd, two different sets of forged papers came about around the same time. There has to be a way of pinning down there original dates. Some of the same players in both forgeries.

[Enchante]

Rockefeller jumped on the matter of the forged documents and Niger uranium as early as MARCH 21, 2003 (just as the Iraq War was getting underway!). HAD JOE WILSON ALREADY PREPPED HIM IN MARCH 2003????? See quote from letter below.... He was being prepped by someone within just weeks after the Bush SOU address (late January). This suggests that the 'Rats were prepared to make hay about the forgeries from early on, before they even knew how the war would turn out, how many WMDs would be found, etc.(remember that in March 2003 virtually everyone including Joe Wilson expected that Saddam had plenty of chem and probably bio weapons and facilities......)--- so they were ready to hang their assault on the Bush administration on the Niger forgery issue and the "16 words" in the SOU at that point!!! That could be highly significant in that few people in March 2003 would have taken the "16 words" seriously at all - why were the 'Rats so ready to hype the forged documents before the war had even been fought??????? Seems like a plan to me.....

March 21, 2003: Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D. WVa) writes FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for an investigation of the Niger letters. "There is a possibility," Rockefeller says, "that the fabrication of these [Niger] documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072905L.shtml [truthout seems to be a loony left website but does have some useful info amidst all the garbage]

[FreedomCalls]

bttt.

[Peach]

A great thread and post, Sam Hill. And a timely reminder.

[processing please hold]

What newspaper seemed to push this Rockefeller/memo story very hard at the time?

[Laverne]

There were articles on the memo, probably in all the papers; however, the articles hardly mentioned the contents of the memo. If memory serves me correctly, most of the media outlets discussed this only in terms of the democrat spin -- the republican were guilty of "stealing" the memo. I think the WSJ actually printed an article about the contents of the memo.

[processing please hold]

Thank you.

I remember the uproar over the memo being leaked...but not it's contents. I thought that was extremely odd. The contents wasn't deemed important, only who leaked it was what the dims were screaming about.

[KingNo155]

I nominate Mellon to be drawn and quartered and one second the nomination?

[Calpernia]

bttt

[Southack]

Just remember, if REPUBLICANS had written that memo, it would have made 41 straight days above the fold on the front cover of the NY Times.

...But since DEMOCRATS wrote that piece of garbage, the news media won't even tell you the names of the ones who authored said memo.

Not even on Page C 27.

[Southack]

"Has anyone looked at whether there could be any connection(s) between the origins of both sets of forgeries??? There has been talk that the Niger uranium forgeries originated in the USA and were released in Italy to put them into 'circulation' - could there be any relation between TWO sets of forgeries (Niger and TANG) designed to harm the Bush 2004 campaign???" - Enchante

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/19/wniger19.xml

Agent behind fake uranium documents worked for France
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
(Filed: 19/09/2004)

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.

The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo".

His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.

Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy's secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.

According to Ansa, the Italian news agency, which said privately that it had obtained its information from "judicial and other sources", Mr Martino was questioned by an investigating magistrate, Franco Ionta, for two hours. Ansa said Mr Martino told the magistrate that Italy's military intelligence, Sismi, had no role in the procuring or dissemination of the Niger documents.

He was also said to have claimed that he had obtained the documents from an employee at the Niger embassy in Rome, before passing these to French intelligence, on whose payroll he had been since at least 2000.

However, he reportedly also added that he had believed that the documents in question were genuine, and to have never suspected that they had been forged. "Martino has clarified his position and offered to deliver to the magistrates the documents which confirm his declarations," his lawyer, Giuseppe Placidi, told Ansa.

It was not possible to contact Mr Martino through his lawyer yesterday. Contacted by The Telegraph, Mr Ionta politely declined to comment, but did not deny that the questioning had taken place. The Interior Ministry in Rome, which had also expressed keen interest in the Telegraph article, refused to comment on the matter.

Mr Martino is said by diplomats to have come forward of his own accord and contacted authorities in the Italian capital following the earlier article in the Telegraph. They said he had written a letter of resignation to the French DGSE intelligence service last week.

According to an Italian newspaper report yesterday, members of the Digos, Italy's anti-terrorist police, removed documents from Mr Martino's home in a northern suburb of Rome on Friday afternoon.

"After being exposed in the international press, French intelligence can hardly be amused or happy with him," one western diplomat said. "Martino may have thought the safest thing was to hand himself over to the Italians." Investigators in Rome suspect that Mr Martino was first engaged by the French secret services five years ago, when he was asked to investigate rumours of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He is thought to have then been retained the following year to collect more information. It was then that he is suspected of having assembled a dossier containing both real and bogus documents from Niger, the latter apparently forged by a diplomat.

In September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. US President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information supplied by MI6.

The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over some of the documents' authenticity, however, and declared them false in March 2003.

In July, the White House withdrew the president's claim, admitting that it was based on inaccurate information. British officials still say that their intelligence about Iraqi uranium purchases was supported by a second, independent source.

[stocksthatgoup]

TREASON

[kcvl]

(Christopher) Mellon, a former Clinton administration official, is part of a network of liberal operatives within the Pentagon and CIA who reportedly are seeking to discredit and politically disable some of the nation's most important architects of the war on terrorism and their efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into terrorist hands. Mellon already was a SSCI staffer when the Clinton administration tapped him to work as a deputy to the assistant secretary of defense for C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence), where he was responsible for security and information operations. In the C3I office, where he held a civilian rank equivalent to a three-star general, Mellon worked on intelligence-policy issues, or in the words of a former colleague, Cheryl J. Roby, "things like personnel, training and recruiting for intelligence." The office is under the purview of the undersecretary of defense for policy, a post now held by conservative Douglas J. Feith.

Clinton-era personnel reforms allowed officials of his administration to burrow into vital Pentagon posts as careerists, administration officials say, where they have been maneuvering to keep Bush loyalists out of key positions and/or undermine their authority while pushing their own political agendas that run contrary to those of the president. This network, Insight has discovered, extends to the Pentagon's outer reaches such as the National Defense University and far-flung academic and influential policy think tanks, or "CINC tanks," serving the commanders ("CINCs") of the U.S. military theaters around the world [see "Clinton Undead Haunting Pentagon," June 17, 2002].

Senate and Department of Defense (DoD) colleagues say Mellon has a beef against Feith and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under whom he served briefly until the new Bush administration made its full transition into office. Intelligence sources say he tried to keep conservatives out of key Pentagon posts and to undermine tough antiterrorism policies after 9/11. Back at the SSCI, Mellon's chief targets for criticism have been Feith and his like-minded State Department colleague, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who holds the nonproliferation portfolio. Both Feith and Bolton are strong supporters of President Bush's advocacy of "regime change" for rogue states and are considered to be among the most faithful advocates in the administration of his personal policy positions.


snip


In his first tour on the Senate intelligence committee, he served as an appointee of the late liberal Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) when George Tenet, a Democrat who now is director of the CIA, was committee staff director. Mellon then took the C3I post at the Pentagon when William Cohen, the liberal Republican senator from Maine, became secretary of defense for Clinton.


******


"Viseon Names Christopher Mellon to Advisory Board
5/11/2004


Tuesday May 11, 11:17 am ET


DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 2004--Viseon, Inc. (OTCBB:VSNI - News), a global developer of broadband personal video communications solutions, today announced that Christopher Mellon, former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, has joined the Viseon Advisory Board. Mr. Mellon is also an adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

snip

Mr. Mellon served on Capitol Hill, including 10 years as a staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and within the Defense Department for almost five years until April 2004.


******



Christopher Mellon


Christopher Mellon has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence since November of 1999. From June 1998 through November 1999, Mr. Mellon served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations. In that capacity he was responsible for policy and programmatic oversight of information assurance, critical infrastructure protection, security, counterintelligence, and information operations strategy and integration. Mr. Mellon went to the Pentagon as a member of Secretary Cohen's transition team on January 2, 1997. Following the transition, Mr. Mellon was appointed as the Coordinator for Advanced Concepts and Program Integration, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, concentrating on encryption and information assurance issues. From November 1997 to June 1998, he served as the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Policy, providing advice on a range of intelligence issues. Before joining the Department of Defense, Mr. Mellon served for 12 years in a variety of positions on Capitol Hill including nearly 10 years as a professional staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr. Mellon received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics at Colby College. He earned his Masters Degree from Yale University in International Relations, with a concentration in finance and management.



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Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 11:49 a.m. EST

Clinton Appointee Linked to Bombshell Anti-Bush Intel Memo

A former member of the Clinton administration is being linked to a bombshell Senate Intelligence Committee memo outlining a strategy to use Iraq war intelligence gathered by the committee to help drive President Bush from office in 2004.

In an editorial Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

"[Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V.] refuses to denounce the memo, which he says was unauthorized and written by staffers. If that's the case, at the very least, some heads ought to roll. A good place to start would be minority staffer Christopher Mellon, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton administration."

One of Mellon's former bosses, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. Last week she accused the White House of trying cover up battlefield casualties and said Bush's decision to invade Iraq was "the antithesis of the rule of law."

The Journal recommended that until those responsible for the Democrats' decision to politicize intelligence are fired, the intelligence committee should be "shut down, cleaned out and reconstituted later, preferably after the next election."

On Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia said that attempts by committee Democrats to undermine an American president during a time of war were "perhaps treasonous."

"If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin," Miller charged in a statement released by his office.

Still, elected Republicans both on and off the Senate Intelligence Committee have expressed nothing like Miller's outrage.

Instead of confronting Democrats over what may be the most serious breach of national security since the Clinton administration allowed a Democratic Party donor to provide missile guidance technology to China, Republicans have urged further bipartisan cooperation with Rockefeller and his staff.

Asked on Thursday what needed to be done to address the security breach, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said only: "The answer is simple. We go back to work. We have documents yet to review."

[kcvl]

Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:35:00 -0800

By Douglas Jehl
Republished from The New York Times


Chiefs of C.I.A.'s Europe and Far East divisions step down in wake of new management, headed by Porter Goss.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 – Two more senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service are stepping down, intelligence officials said Wednesday, in the latest sign of upheaval in the agency under its new chief, Porter J. Goss.

As the chiefs of the Europe and Far East divisions, the two officials have headed spying operations in some of the most important regions of the world and were among a group known as the barons in the highest level of clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations.

The directorate has been the main target of an overhaul effort by Mr. Goss and his staff. Its chief, Stephen R. Kappes, and his deputy resigned this month after a dispute with the new management team.

An intelligence official said that the two division chiefs were retiring from the agency and that there would be no public announcement. Neither could be named, the official said, because they are working under cover.

A former intelligence official described the two as “very senior guys” who were stepping down because they did not feel comfortable with new management.

In a memorandum to agency employees last week, Mr. Goss warned that more personnel changes were coming as part of what he described as an effort to rebuild the ability of the agency to perform its core mission of stealing secrets.

Last week, President Bush directed Mr. Goss to draw up detailed plans in 90 days for a major overhaul of the agency, to address shortcomings that have become evident with intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and prewar assessments of Iraq.

The directive included a call for 50 percent increases in crucial operations and analytical personnel, a goal that the agency had already set in a five-year strategic plan drafted in December under George J. Tenet, the previous director of central intelligence. Many of the agency’s top officials, including John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director, and A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official, have stepped down or announced plans to do so since Mr. Goss took office in September. The upheaval has been most extensive in the operations directorate, made up of spies and spymasters who have made careers out of stealing secrets.

The clandestine service is a proud closed fraternity and one that sees itself as fiercely loyal and not risk-averse. It is also a group that has recoiled in recent weeks at the criticisms leveled at the agency, including comments this month from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who accused the agency of acting “almost as a rogue” institution.

Mr. Goss is a former spy and a member of the clandestine service who worked in Latin America in the 60’s. More recently, he was a Republican congressman and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and he has made plain his view that the current crop of case officers is not bold enough.

What is playing out in the agency headquarters is no less than a clash of cultures on a scale not seen there. since the Carter administration, when Stansfield Turner, a retired admiral, took a half-dozen Navy officers with him to the agency in 1977.

Under Mr. Goss, it is a cadre of former House Republican aides, not Navy officers, who dominate the new management team. This month, they have toppled Mr. Kappes and his deputy, Michael Sulick, in a way that former intelligence officials say has shown little regard for the tradition-bound clandestine service which has always prized rank, experience and lines of authority.

“The C.I.A. is a line organization like the military,” said Christopher Mellon, a former intelligence official at the Defense Department and the Senate Intelligence Committee. “When staff guys insert themselves, that causes confusion and discontent.”

Under Mr. Goss, the extent of the rebellion in the ranks is not clear. Much of the anger has been focused on a former Congressional aide, Patrick Murray, the chief of staff, who is said to have raised the hackles of some station chiefs around the world. The atmosphere has so deteriorated in the agency that some career officers have begun using derogatory nicknames for Mr. Murray and his colleagues, former intelligence officials said.

A backdrop to the tensions have been accusations from some Republicans that the agency sought over the summer to undermine Mr. Bush’s re-election. Mr. McCain, in suggesting that the agency had been disloyal, has singled out the disclosure of intelligence reports about Iraq whose conclusions were at odds with administration assertions about the war.

In a rare public rebuttal, John E. McLaughlin, a career C.I.A. official who is stepping down as the agency’s No. 2 official after less than two months as Mr. Goss’s deputy, wrote in an op-ed article on Tuesday in The Washington Post that the accusation was unjustified.

“C.I.A. officers are career professionals who work for the president,” Mr. McLaughlin wrote. “They see this as a solemn duty, regardless of which party holds the White House. Has everyone ruled out the possibility that the intelligence community during this period was simply doing its job – calling things as it saw them – and that people with a wide array of motives found it advantageous to put out this material when the C.I.A.’s views seemed at odds with the administration’s?”

Still, the memorandum that Mr. Goss issued last week advised his employees that the agency’s job was to “support the administration and its policies” and to do nothing to associate themselves with opposition to the administration.

People close to Mr. Goss and Mr. Murray, 40, say the two believe that major shakeups are needed.

“What’s going on at the agency now is very clearly a group of deskbound bureaucrats who don’t want the system to change,” said Gardiner Peckham, a longtime friend of Mr. Murray and, like him, a former Republican Congressional official. “Basically, they’re looking at a president, a director and his chief of staff who are change agents. There are some who would like to stand in the way and prevent that change from taking place, and they shouldn’t win.”

Mr. Turner, as intelligence chief under President Jimmy Carter, had an agenda that was the opposite in many ways from Mr. Goss’s. He sought to shrink the clandestine service and rein it in, in reaction to the abuses of the 60’s and 70’s. Mr. Goss wants to make it bigger and bolder, in response to failures in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and in prewar intelligence on Iraq.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Turner said he recognized the challenge that Mr. Goss was facing.

“Criticize the D.O., and you’re in trouble,” Mr. Turner said, using an abbreviation for the operations directorate. “Try to modify the way that operation works, and if you’re an outsider, you’re in trouble.”

Mr. Goss and his team, including Mr. Murray, have never made a secret of their view that the clandestine service was in need of major change. A report by the House Intelligence Committee issued in June, when Mr. Goss was its chairman and Mr. Murray its staff director, portrayed the operations directorate in scathing terms, disparaging what it called “a continued political aversion to operations risk” and calling for “immediate and far-reaching changes.”

“The nimble, flexible, core-mission oriented enterprise the D.O. once was, is becoming just a fleeting memory,” the report said. “With each passing day, it becomes harder to resurrect.”

The report so infuriated the agency that Mr. Tenet, who was still director of central intelligence, shot off an angry letter to Mr. Goss.

To replace Mr. Kappes, Mr. Goss has appointed a career covert officer whose name has not been announced because he is undercover but who has been most recently director of the Counterterrorism Center at the agency.

An agency spokesman declined to comment on the internal dispute.

[Sam Hill]

"Still, the memorandum that Mr. Goss issued last week advised his employees that the agency’s job was to “support the administration and its policies” and to do nothing to associate themselves with opposition to the administration."

I guess Valerie didn't get the memo.

[piasa]

There is yet another forged document that made the rounds if not widespread news...

Someone forged a letter to look like it came from a US diplomat and sent it to the press - it concerned the diplomat's alleged opinion of the current President and goings on at the State Dept -but the diplomat [not Wilson] said it wasn't written by him and didn't reflect his views.

[GloriaJane]

"This suggests that the 'Rats were prepared to make hay about the forgeries from early on, before they even knew how the war would turn out, how many WMDs would be found, etc.(remember that in March 2003 virtually everyone including Joe Wilson expected that Saddam had plenty of chem and probably bio weapons and facilities......)--- so they were ready to hang their assault on the Bush administration on the Niger forgery issue and the "16 words" in the SOU at that point!!! That could be highly significant in that few people in March 2003 would have taken the "16 words" seriously at all"

Maybe even earlier then that. Remember that letter a bunch of democrats signed and sent over to the President calling for war? I'm wondering now who all signed their name to that letter? Because like you, I'm wondering just how far back this dirty deal goes.

[Ann Archy]

Just one of many Democrat Traitors. They want the US to lose so that they may win back power. It's disgusting.

[Sam Hill]

[Fedora]

Thanks for the pings. BTW we can actually document Rockefeller's involvement in that even earlier, from at least March 14, 2003:

Seymour M. Hersh, "Who Lied to Whom? Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?", The New Yorker, March 31, 2003

On March 14th, Senator Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally asked Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, to investigate the forged documents. Rockefeller had voted for the resolution authorizing force last fall. Now he wrote to Mueller, "There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." He urged the F.B.I. to ascertain the source of the documents, the skill-level of the forgery, the motives of those responsible, and "why the intelligence community did not recognize the documents were fabricated." A Rockefeller aide told me that the F.B.I. had promised to look into it.