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What ever could you MENA by that remark? ;-)
Risen is nothing but a political hack!
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June 25, 2003 by the New York Times
Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence
by James Risen and Douglas Jehl
"Mr. Westermann's decision to speak out has caused a stir inside the House and Senate intelligence committees."
WASHINGTON, June 24 — A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several Congressional officials said today.
The officials described what they said was a dramatic moment at a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week when the weapons expert came forward to tell Congress he had felt such pressure.
By speaking out, they said, the senior intelligence expert, identified by several officials as Christian Westermann, became the first member of the intelligence community on active service to make this sort of admission to members of Congress...
snip
A number of analysts have suggested that they felt less direct pressure on reports concerning the status of Iraq's unconventional weapons, but were angered that senior Bush administration officials selectively disclosed classified intelligence reports that supported the worst-case scenario concerning Iraq's weapons programs, making it seem as if there was an imminent threat to the United States.
The analysts believe that in some cases, White House and Pentagon officials made public statements about Iraq's weapons based on intelligence that was far from definitive.
An administration official said that Mr. Westermann had clashed repeatedly with Mr. Bolton.
A State Department official sympathetic to Mr. Bolton's views said of Mr. Westermann, "He doesn't have anything that he can point to, and he doesn't have anything more recent than Cuba." That official added, "We're in a period where people are looking for particular evidence of intelligence being altered, and he's talking about mood swings."
But other administration officials said there had been ongoing tensions between the two since the Cuban issue first came up, to the point that Mr. Bolton has unsuccessfully sought to have Mr. Westermann reassigned.
http://tinyurl.com/bopgn
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Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell praised Mr. Westermann in 2003 for providing confidential testimony to the Senate intelligence panel about his disagreements on arms matters. Mr. Powell said he was "pleased" that Mr. Westermann had "honestly answered" when asked about pressure to describe undue influence on intelligence on Iraq.
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Aide: State Dept. Bureaucrat ‘Lied' About E-mail
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, April 18, 2005
Bush critics in the Senate are working overtime to discredit John Bolton, the nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
snip
Although Westermann was never reassigned as a result of his run-in with Bolton, two of Westermann's supervisors, Neil Silver and Tom Fingar, confirmed that Bolton wanted Westermann reassigned. But one manager - Carl Ford - claimed to an SFRC hearing last week that Bolton wanted Westermann fired.
Meanwhile, Frederick Fleitz, a CIA officer on detail to John Bolton's staff as a special assistant, has not only disputed Westermann's version of events but says the State Dept. analyst lied about his actions.
In a deposition made before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Fleitz testified:
# Westermann sent an e-mail that was so partial that the clearing agency for the Cuban intelligence in question, the Central Intelligence Agency, could not make out what Westermann was asking for. This caused the CIA to call Fleitz for an explanation of what exactly Westermann was asking it to do.
"I have to say that I have done a lot of speeches in my time at State for Mr. Bolton, and I have de-classified things at the Agency in a variety of capacities, and this - in my opinion - appeared to be obstruction, an effort to obstruct a legitimate request of the Intelligence Community. Basically, he was trying to find a way not to send it out, when he asked that. It was completely unreasonable, he knew I couldn't provide the source documents, some of these published IC papers were several years old, it was impossible for me to provide them, and I refused."
# Westermann prevaricated about what he sent to CIA when Fleitz asked him about it:
"Mr. Westerman lied when he told us that he had sent the language that Mr. Bolton wanted de-classified to the Agency intact, and only with source citations. That was untrue…
"I sent him an email saying, ‘Christian, WINPAC [CIA's Weapons Intelligence Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center] tells me that you sent the language to WINPAC but with a note attached to it disputing the language and asking that other language be approved instead. Is this true?'
"And his response was, ‘I sent your language intact. I only added sources and citations to help them declassify it. And I told him this didn't seem to be what really happened.'
snip
# Westermann actually tried to block Bolton's Cuba bio-weapons language request and not send it to the CIA at all.
# Two of Westermann's supervisors: Fingar and Thielmann apologized for Westermann's behavior at the time of his run-in with Bolton.
# A senior colleague of Westermann's told Fleitz at the time that Westermann had "violated State and IC [Intelligence Community] protocol big time."
# "I want to state clearly, right now, that Mr. Bolton never said Mr. Westermann should be fired, or removed from his job. I never heard him say that, I don't know anybody he said that to."
# Fleitz also disputed an allegation that Bolton intimidated "Mr. Smith," a former senior CIA national intelligence officer for Latin America, noting that Bolton never met the anonymous officer.
http://tinyurl.com/bvk5w