Too bad. If this is true then Ron Suskind just got hit with the exact same trick that brought down Dan Rather: take a damaging true story (in this case, that the administration fabricated documents that made it look like Iraq had contact with al Qaeda and sought yellowcake from Niger) and preemptively leak it to a reporter with enough bogus details stirred in to discredit the reporter and the story itself. I don’t know whether or not Philip Giraldi has better contacts than Ron Suskind does, but it doesn’t help Suskind’s case that his two named sources are contradicting what they apparently told him in private.
More than that, using Doug Feith’s office makes more sense any way you look at it. You don’t have the many potentially unreliable layers through which the order would have to pass – unlike CIA, OSP was a nirvana of single-minded ideological purity. This assignment would fit neatly in the Iraq propaganda organizational flow chart as OSP, which is already knee–deep in Niger yellowcake forgeries.
If I’m right then we know what happens next. Powerline or an acceptable substitute will drum up the noise shortly, bury Suskind’s credibility and scare any other reporter away from ever touching the story again. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I recall we never found out what kept the American president from reporting for duty at that Texas Air National Guard base.
jbd
I’m not in the business, so I don’t know: Shouldn’t a veteran reporter be more wary of this? Are there ways Suskind could have protected himself and still gotten the story out?
Jose Padilla
Suskind was foolish if he did not get their story on tape and I’m sure his publishers would have insisted on it. Still, this unnamed source basically confirms that the Bush administration carried out an illegal operation.
Napoleon
I think in an interview of Suskind on The Daily Show (I would guess it is available online) he said he taped those interviews and has them.
cleek
i’m not sure how more evidence that the US government was forging documents which were used to entice the country into war makes the story untouchable. seems like this makes it even more interesting – even if Suskind was misinformed about which office of the US government was doing the forging. and, IMO, evidence that’s there’s an effort to discredit reporters is evidence of something worth uncovering.
NonyNony
Suskind said on Olberman the other night that he can back up every one of his claims. And that despite their denials now, he has Richer and Maguire on tape to verify every claim they’re now denying.
And we did find out what kept Bush from reporting for duty – we knew it before the Rather story. He didn’t want to go and his daddy had connections. That wasn’t news.
Napoleon
Actually I amend what I said above, I think this is where I heard him say he had it on tape.
SpotWeld
It’s not exactly FUD, but it’s at least its close cousin.
Move the story away from the content of the story and focus it on the players.
1) Hype the “damage” that Suskind is doing to someone’s career (as part of a “liberal” campaign to lose the war on terror.)
2) Noise, Noise, Noise. Expect tons of useless focus on meaningless conspiracy theories. (Someone will try to compile a timeline to “prove” that Suskind couldn’t have been where he says he was for the interviews.)
3) Ignore any supporting data. This is going to be all about this one interview. Any other interviews or corroborating information will be dismissed as a distraction.
4) A and B suggest C, if A is false, B must also be false. This flawed logic will be dragged out to prove that Bush never did anything wrong.
5) Somehow this wil all be Obama’s fault.
Settle in folks, the kerners are out in force!
IMHO, it is possible that Suskind has put forth a flase conclusion. If he has the tape that shows the information he based that concllusion on I hope it supplies it to the media.
Time will tell I guess.
linda
jose — when suskind was on olbermann earlier this week, he said he did have the tapes of the interviews. it’s also worth keeping in mind that he notes in the acknowledgments:
Suskind writes in the acknowledgments that his research assistant, Greg Jackson, “was sent to New York on a project for the book” in September 2007 and was “detained by federal agents in Manhattan. He was interrogated and his notes were confiscated, violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights.” The author provides no further detail.
the above providing ample opportunity to prepare for the campaign to discredit suskind. i wonder what measures he took to assure his phone/computer/home security wasn’t breeched.
NSinNY
Agree completely with cleek. In order to undermine the credibility of Suskind’s story (that it was the CIA that was responsible for the forgery), you would have to advertise the fact that the real counterfeiters were in an office set up by the principals (Cheney, Bush, Libby, et al.) with the intent of disseminating propaganda.
The CIA has long been a useful scapegoat for wingers, who have justified their own ignorance by pointing to the CIA’s misbehavior and incompetence, real or imagined. Tracing this event to Feith, a Cheney guy if ever there was one puts the malfeasance closer to the White House than a CIA forgery ever would.
I think anytime the public is reminded of the existence of the OSP, it’s a bad thing for the Powerline crowd.
Frans
The denials are all very carefully crafted. Note the chain of command formula. Note that the White House denial is worthless, since the OSP was a DOD creation.
Dennis - SGMM
After nearly eight years of the Bush administration, Susskind’s revelations didn’t even cause me to raise an eyebrow. The barrage of lies and character assassination that followed was as predictable as snow on top of Mount Everest.
Did anyone really expect any other outcome?
furrythug
Free reign to burn his sources then. Let’s get it on.
frogspawn
@Dennis – SGMM
I certainly hope Suskind didn’t, and prepared himself accordingly. He should know who he’s dealing with by now.
Napoleon
By the way, Suskind got the single best quote out of someone in the Bush administration (I would guess Rove) that he had in an Esquire article in 2002 that the second I read it I believed people would recognize 100 years from now as summing up in one qoute everything that is wrong with this administration and our country at this point in time:
jonst
I don’t see/hear anybody consulting defamation lawyers. I think Suskind is daring the Dems to call his bluff. I will bet the GOP will not do it. They don’t want to hear what this guy has to say. Neither do the Dems for that matter. But they have their base to think about. (for “think about”…read: try to fool. They have to make a show of it. The GOP does not)
Now, are the tapes crystal clear, in their meaning? Can a good lawyer put a different spin on it? Sure. That is another story. But you can bet the house Suskind has something he thinks is solid and irrefutable. I repeat….he is asking people to call his bluff.
Zifnab
It’s all a giant crock of bull. The difference between Rather in ’04 and Susskind in ’08 is that the nation hadn’t been exposed to the mountains of bullshit in the intervening 4 year period.
The White House blew through its credibility years ago. All the word parsing and definition twisting and motivation questioning they do now will just draw more heat down on the issue. I’m betting the White House closes its eyes, covers its ears, tells everyone it isn’t important, never happened, no comment on an ongoing investigation, and just hangs in till they can slip out the back in a hail of pardons.
linda
The White House blew through its credibility years ago.
look at the huge skepticism surrounding ivins’ suiciding.. i’ve been reading comments at various newspapers, and nearly everyone posting at them dont believe the fbi’s bullshit story one bit.
Grand Moff Texan
I think you’re being too pessimistic.
If the American Conservative is pushing a line that says “same result, different means,” then it has the same political impact.
If Powerline or some other hole wants to make this about Suskind personally, well good luck with that. Most Americans will never know who he is, but they know that Bush lied to them about the connection between AQ and Saddam.
.
Punchy
Who f’ing cares? He writes some totally believable shit, Dems go “SEE? GOTCHA!”, Repubs go “LIAR!”, White House screams “LIAR!”, media goes “Uh…hmmm…(looks to Drudge)…well, OK….LIAR!”
Rinse, repeat.
And nobody ever talks about this again.
montysano
I’m sure that most Balloon Juicers remember the Downing Street Memo, which basically proved the same thing as Suskind’s revelations: that Iraq was completely a war of choice, not of necessity. I’m also sure that, if you did a Jay Leno “ask the man in the street” thing, fewer than 10% would have any idea about the Downing Street Memo. It’s gone, disappeared down the Memory Hole.
Can there be a more impeachable offense than dragging the country off to war on false pretenses? If the media did their job, people should be in the streets with torches and pitchforks. Keith Olbermann (for all his faults) can’t carry the whole load by himself.
El Cid
The only part about this story I found personally surprising was the prospect that such clear evidence of such propaganda, deceit, and forgery might be found while Bush Jr. was still in office.
Joshua Norton
Not with old “Pardon Me”, Georgie steering the Ship of State into the iceberg.
D. Mason
Look for this humiliating revelation to drive Suskind to “suicide” in the next few weeks.
Elvis Elvisberg
That’s a huge overexaggeration.
In reality, someone writes some totally believable shit, Dems go “this might or might not merit some serious examination at some point in the future”, Repubs go “LIAR!”, media goes “Uh…hmmm…(looks to Drudge)…well, OK….LIAR!”
Chris Johnson
“Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but”
Wait, what?
Okay, let me get this straight. They are prepared to admit that they were forging documents to take the country to an illegal aggressive war against a relatively innocent country but they still win because his fucking countertops are wrong?
I didn’t think I still could be surprised. I expected “but the kerning!” but I totally did not expect a direct admission of guilt. What the hell is going on, are they playing some sort of game where they believe they can do crimes and commit forgeries so long as they back it up with character assassination? For whom is that supposed to fly? Conservatives?
Thom
you’re moving way too fast. Susking said he has these guys on tape, hours worth. No reason to believe he’d lie about that, it’d be suicide for his career.
Give this a little time.
Thom
you’re moving way too fast. Susking said he has these guys on tape, hours worth. No reason to believe he’d lie about that, it’d be suicide for his career.
Give this a little time.
Thom
Damn. You linked to a post that said this:
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…
Are you serious? Seems like you’ve got something against Suskind to knock him with this jawdropping nonsense.
And please read this regarding what Tenet said about an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection. This is from 2006:
maxbaer (not the original)
One more nail in the Bush legacy.
Tony J
Nah, Tim. As has been mentioned already, Suskind says he has tapes of the interviews from which he’s quoting. For this to presage a Rathering, Suskind would have to be relying on a photocopy of the original incriminating White House document outlining the forgery, only one written in a font that – shock horror – they could prove wasn’t brought in for another two weeks!!
ZOMG!!! Here you go MSM, we’ve killed it, you bury it.
(If this has been printed twice, blame fekking WordPress. Grumble)
Xenos
I wonder if any journalist has ever sued a source for fraud. Not sure why Rather never went there, not like he has a reputation to maintain. Sure would be nice to get people like Ron Stone in a five day deposition.
zoe from pittsburgh
In Suskind’s interview on Fresh Air today he talks specifically about this– that he warned the two sources that they’re going to feel “heat” like they’ve never felt before when the book comes out. In a matter of hours his sources went from “yeah, we can take it” to myseteriously changing their minds and trying to deny everything. Suskind said this is common, that they need to be called before congress and given immunity, that many people get cold feet but do the right thing in the end. One really must wonder who called them up and what they said to get them to suddenly deny everything– blackmail anyone?
Suskind was asked if he were prepared to testify before congress and offer taped evidence to back up his claims– he said he is perfectly capable and willing to do so. Who wants to take bets that this won’t happen?
Delia
Yeah, thatFresh Air interview is worth a listen. Suskind talks specifically about how carefully you have to parse these statements from these characters and what they do and don’t say.
Max Power
The key difference here from Rather is that Suskind names his sources.
Therefore it’s their credibility in question, not Suskind’s.
If the sources change their story – either because they were seeking to entrap Suskind before, or under pressure from the government afterwards – that’s a legitimate story in itself.
DrBB
I have to go with Chris Johnson, upthread. If this prospective “Rathering” is going to take place, it’s got kind of a big stumble right out of the blocks.
Here’s the real headline: American Conservative Magazine Declares “Suskind Correct.”
Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct
I mean, criminy. The Rathergate equivalent would be “Powerline declares Rather got the story of Bush going AWOL correct, but some details were wrong.” That’s pretty weak beer for anyone angling for Blog of the Year.
Xanthippas
I’m with DrBB and the other commentators here. This doesn’t strike me as anything on par with “Rathergate”, as the fact that Suskind (or his sources) might be wrong about who fabricated the letter hardly diminishes the fact that someone fabricated it on orders from the White House. And Giraldi agrees with Suskind’s basic premise, which is that a letter was forged, so I see no real controversy. And yes, Suskind has said the interviews were taped so for him to be wrong, his sources have to be wrong. Right now it’s Giraldi v. Suskind over only one detail of the story, and who’s to say that Giraldi is right and Suskind is wrong And Kevin Drum-who links here by the way-says we should take Giraldi’s version with a grain of salt. I just don’t see how this undercuts the basic premise of the story.
fenris
Tell me something – why is it that every time the cia has a conclusion, or did something the White House didn’t like – then it was a “separate agency acting on it’s own with no connection to the Cia leadership(who are careful to only say the right politically balanced things that will neither enable the president or tie his hands, in order to escape allegations of political bias, which is illegal – by law!)”.
And why does this excuse always work? None of you can be this stupid, can you? Or, I guess, are you suggesting there are separate agencies not mandated in law that exist to only fix stories for Cheney?
No, I guess not, huh, because this deft and “carefully planned” damage control actually discredits Suskind, of all possible things.
Seriously – what the hell is wrong with you people? Would you all commit suicide by accident if rightie talk radio claimed it was logical and proper to hold your breath while singing the national anthem as well?
I mean, it sure seems as if you’re in mortal danger to me.
jcricket
Suskind is smart enough to have learned from Rathergate. His sources are well identified and documented on tape.
By jumping all over the semantics of who the ultimate ‘forgers’ are (CIA? OSP?), we are distracted from the true, original criminals who sought to put this into play– Bush and Cheney. For example, when a hitman is hired, the hiring person is just as guilty of murder as the actual hitman. By demanding forgeries, Bush and Cheney are (allegedly) just as guilty as any forgers, whether those forgers are CIA or OSP. Our focus should be on the actual crime, (conspiracy or actual) and should not be satisfied with stopping at the doorstep of one particular agency.
Jonst posts above that Suskind is asking for someone to call his bluff. It is my belief, from what I have read, that Suskind is challenging the powers that be to, in turn, challenge his assertions….but he is definitely NOT bluffing.
the *real* jcricket
Plumb Bob
The relevant details are very clearly in the public record. The airplane on which Bush was trained had been grounded by the Air Force, and training on a new plane is costly, so they don’t train guys who are about to leave. The Air National Guard’s decision was “Where is Lt. Bush going to waste his last few hundred hours,” and whatever decision they made about that are inconsequential. If I were a military officer with a subordinate in that situation, I’d probably say to him, “Look, son, lose yourself,” and be pretty irritated if he didn’t.
The continued insistence that there’s a story here worth investigating constitutes obsession with trivia. Drop it.
As to Suskind’s accusations, the source of nearly every such accusation for the past 7 years has been some shadowy operative or other within the CIA. The investigation I want to see is the one attempting to identify which elements within the CIA planned what activities to discredit and topple the government of the United States; it looks as though there’s been something akin to a subtle coup attempt from inside the Agency. The fact that the President’s critics accept uncritically any such report and echo it forever, never questioning whether the source has ulterior motives, says everything that needs to be known about those critics.
casual observer
Two named sources trumps one unnamed source.
Mike D.
Sir, aye aye, sir!
The President doesn’t really have critics, by the way. He has mockers. The Administration has critics, many, many of them. Try to keep up; it isn’t 2002 anymore.
Mike Alexander
Chris Johnson asks
What the hell is going on, are they playing some sort of game where they believe they can do crimes and commit forgeries so long as they back it up with character assassination? For whom is that supposed to fly? Conservatives?
Yes
Montysano asks
Can there be a more impeachable offense than dragging the country off to war on false pretenses?
Yes there can be.
The Gulf War, Vietnam, and Korea were all imperial wars justified on false pretenses. It’s perfectly acceptable to do this if you then WIN the war quickly. Nobody had a problem with the Gulf War, which faced more Congressional opposition than the Iraq war. For Korea and Vietnam, the administration who got us into these dubious conflicts LOST in the next election because of the war. Only in Iraq did the administration who got us into the war win the next election. That’s what makes Iraq frustrating. Our political system rewarded the lies.
What is worse than lying into war is *murder*. In the Anthrax case, five Americans were murdered, and murder attempts were made on several prominent leaders of the opposition party. These actions were blamed on Iraq when it was known that the anthrax came from a US government laboratory. In other words government officials lied to protect the real murderer(s), making them accomplices after the fact.
Now usually this would all blow away because people would just assume that the killer was a lone nut. But we now know the adminstration lied us into the Iraq war And we know that the anthrax attack was a major piece of the justification for the war, which was that Saddam would give WMDs (i.e. bioweapons) to Islamic terrorists to use against American civilians as was purported to have already happened with Anthrax. We know that the government handed out Cipro to officials after 911 and warned media people that they should obtain Cipro. It would seem that they feared than and anthrax attack might come. And it did.
But now that we know that the Anthrax attacks were made by US government personnel, not Islamic terrorist, but made to look like it had come from Islamic terrorists. That these government attacks on Americans were made just after 911 occurred clearly shows that the motive behind them was to scare Americans into fearing more attacks from al Qaeda types armed with bioweapons or other WMDs. And we know that four highly placed government officials lied about the anthrax coming from Iraq–making them part of the conspiracy. This makes it less likley that it was a lone nut.
In other words there is real evidence to support the idea that the anthrax attacks were a rogue operation (like Iran-Contra) done with administration approval, but with plausible deniability. The normal argument against “conspiracy theories” is belief that the government woulnd’t do that, or that the government had no motive to do this.
But we now know that this adminstration would plant false evidence to go to war. And as for the morality of murder, people die in wars and many of them are innocents–collateral damage we call it–so this aminstration could easily justify the anthrax dead as a necessary evil (part of the “dark side” Cheney talked about). This adminstration is sufficently unpopular that for many Americans that idea that Cheney had American civilians killed for political gain is no longer far-fetched.
fleinn
I think all of you should read Suskins take on the contrast between the Bush- administration and the Nixon- administration. Generally, what he suggests is that the idea is no longer to simply forge plausible deniability when that is necessary – but instead it is to create a distance between the president and those he orders to follow generalised directives.
I.e, they give a general justification for torture, or a redefinition of what torture is – but won’t specifically order it. Thereby being in the clear legally, since all administration officials will be able to either claim they did not break the law, followed orders, or else will be able to claim excecutive immunity due to being close enough to actually know something. Anyone breaking out or getting caught are just a few bad apples.
The question here is what do you propose is illegal: as several people mention, the system awarded those who exploited it. Because not enough people are able to say clearly that deliberately forging immunity from the law and any open process is the complete opposite of what democracy is about.
(You nazi bastards).
Anna Keppa
All I want to know is: where is a copy of this farking letter???? Who showed it to whom? Has anyone in Congress claimed they saw it? Did the 9-11 Commission Report refer to it? What internal documents demonstrate that it was accepted as an “excuse” for invading Iraq?
If Suskind’s claim were valid why wouldn’t Boosh and Cheney have been waving the letter at every press poohbah and politician? It would have been the farking Smoking Gun!
Compare this ephemera, allegedly faked “document” with the Zimmerman Telegram, which was intercepted and decoded by the British, and became the public basis for a casus belli against the Germans.
Why would Boosh forge a letter and then keep it secret???
fenris
Because it was valid enough to claim: “we believe that there is a connection(until the opposite is proven conclusively, which will be determined by “history” if it really was possible to say, like the surrendermonkeys claim in their ignorance of super- secret briefings)”. But on the other hand,not valid enough to not get fearful little cowards screaming their heads off about what “might” happen – that would be worse than anything you could imagine.
Which, in case you’ve forgotten, was a kind of logic that a quite large amount of americans were, and still is, very impressed with.
Except, since history seems to come closer without the flight suit messiah bringing about the new world, this has reduced Bush from 70 to 30% in the polls. But I doubt very much that the sentiments that made Bush so popular initially have really cooled off. (See, for example, “I always knew Edward(s’ labour, healthcare and economic policies, as well as his critique of Obamas substanceless and contradictory platform) was phony – and now his penis proves it!” further up on this blog. Posted by persons who presume to be politically shrewd and well- informed).
See, It doesn’t stop, and there’s not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it. Except if people try to use their brain, of course. But that isn’t going to happen in any near future.
Still – there’s always the option of genocide, I guess.
Andrew Wang
Bush is the worst president in American history. Bush facilitated the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, Bush lied to Congress and the American people relative to the reasons for invading Iraq. Bush purposefully misled Congress and the American people. Then, Bush murdered more than 4,000 United States service members. And Bush wounded more than 30,000 United States service members. In torturing prisoners of war, Bush patently violated the Geneva Convention. Bush unlawfully wiretapped United States citizens. In using “signing statements” to challenge hundreds of laws passed by Congress, Bush violated the Constitution. Bush has ignored global warming. Bush is guilty of criminal negligence relative to the response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush disobeys our democratic values and Constitution. Bush is a disgrace to the United States.
Furthermore, Ron Suskind has revealed that Bush directed the forgery of a letter connecting Iraq to the 9/11 attacks. Bush is beyond help.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA