Posted on 06/06/2008 11:02:15 AM PDT by BGHater
Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.
The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
I always wondered what become of those Iraqi defectors who insisted that WMDs were littering the streets of Iraq. Everyone in the administration, CIA and Pentagon bought it hook line and sinker. Well, the ones that were not “asked” to retire that is.
Yeah, I’m sure a panel of Senate Democrats has this whole episode nailed down, huh?
Exactly!! How quickly we forget that we have our own disinformation mill - Democraps.
Our best and brightest don’t go into intelligence anymore, or at least when they do, they don’t get anywhere under the leadership of the hippie fringes that have infiltrated it over the last 40 years (just like they now run our schools, universities, and so many other institutions and bureaucracies) and what you end up with is unintelligent intelligence.
Sorry, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
“Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.”
Until something besides talk is actually done (if it ever is) about Iran, I would agree with this statement.
There has been lots of talk over the last 5 years, of course.
Actually, I was pissing on the Senate Democrats tree that runs the intel committee that produced this report.
This is horsehockey.
The US wasn’t the first to buy into the estimate, the Europeans were, and all of their agencies bought it too.
Those WMD are SOMEWHERE, though not in Iraq.
Iran is building ballistic missles to put on a fireworks show at Ramadan. They are doing it to deliver WMD.
The intel was good then, and the estimate was worth acting on. Any idiot that thinks Iran is posturing isn’t fit to hold a national security position.
Mein Kampf taught us that when an autocrat declares the annihilation of an entire race, and has the ability, or demonstrated the will to do it, then you are compelled to take him at his word.
OK then, stream away.
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