כ Ledeen on WMD's and CIA Inaction. Michael Ledeen gives us more information on President Bush versus the CIA on weapsons in Iraq in National Review Online. He is talking about David Kay, the weapons inspector, whom he knows and likes:
The guy could never get David on the phone because the CIA decided not to investigate
after all. The CIA never went to look, and I don't know if that stuff was real or
fictional. But this case was totally different from the Potemkin WMDs of David's elegant
theory. Because my guy was in contact with the people who said they had moved the stuff
from Iraq to Iran. They were now sick, and wanted to tell their story before they got
much worse. But, as I say, the CIA never went to look. They pretended they wanted to,
they finally met with my guy, but they told him they didn't believe his story (although
there was really no reason to either believe it or not, it was a matter of either
looking or not, and if you didn't look you couldn't know anything one way or the other).
He said the people who had done the smuggling had a full description of the material on
a CD Rom, which they were willing to provide. CIA wasn't interested. And that's the end
of it, so far as I know.
So there's one instance where the CIA wasn't curious enough to take a ride and look at a
lab. And I ask myself whether there were other such cases. I know of other examples, not
involving WMDs, but involving Saddam's money, where CIA refused to look, and the stories
they were told --and decided not to believe-- turned out to be true.
And then I read the words of Peter Hain, the leader of the House of Commons in London.
He says "I saw evidence that was categorical on Saddam possessing chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction." And we know, from the recent Hutton Report,
that Tony Blair's claim that Saddam could be prepared to launch WMD attacks against
Coalition forces "within 45 minutes," had come directly from MI6. Were the Brits fooled
too? Hain insists they were not.
Last August I called him in Baghdad to tell him that I had a person -- a good person,
like himself, a person I trust-- who was prepared to take him to an underground
laboratory from which a quantity of enriched uranium had been taken a few years ago, and
smuggled to Iran. Wow, he said, let's go look. Have the guy call me, we'll check it out.
Why wouldn't the CIA follow up a lead like this? Perhaps because they were afraid it
might turn up something. If you've been saying there are no WMD's, then the worst thing
for your career is if WMD's show up. And in the present case, suppressing the truth
isn't even all that bad for one's country, because this search is mostly about
justifying the past rather than protecting us in the future. If the WMD's aren't found,
Bush looks bad; if they are found, certain people in the CIA look bad; which would be
preferred by those people in the CIA?
[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.02c.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
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