Author: Larry Johnson

by Larry Johnson

The Richard Cohen piece in today’s Washington Post was outrageous. Here are the facts. – LJ

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald understands very well that something beyond a crime was committed when Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and other White House operatives spread the name of undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, around Washington as part of a coordinated effort to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Someone needs to alert Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen that he is a nitwit and moron for trying to advance White House supplied talking points that no real crime occurred.

Update [2005-10-14 17:4:26 by Larry Johnson]: See also: Richard Cohen on the Self Interest of the Press by Col. Patrick Lang, who often posts on my blog. …………………………. Biography: Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.

Here are some of the facts that will come out when Fitzgerald ends his investigation:

1. Valerie Plame was still a non-official cover officer in July 2003 when her identity was revealed by colostomy bag Bob Novak.
   

   
   

2. Valerie Plame had traveled overseas on secret missions using that cover as required under the statute in question.
   

   
   

3. Valerie Plame’s exposure also almost compromised the identity of other non-official cover officers.
   

   
   

4. Valerie Plame did not have the authority to send her husband on the Niger mission and in fact did not make the decision.

Other mental midgets like Cohen, such as Victoria Toensing, continue to insist that no crime could have been committed because Valerie Plame, “worked at a desk job”. Newsflash for these so-called Washington insiders who have proven they know nothing about the intelligence community–at least 40% of the people working at CIA Headquarters are working undercover. Just because they may physically go to the CIA building in McLean, Virginia everyday does not mean that their relationship with the CIA is acknowledged.

During my four years of sitting at a desk at CIA I was undercover. My position with the CIA was not even known by my own parents. Only my wife was privy to that secret. Many of the undercover folks still working at CIA are at headquarters on a temporary basis. Some travel overseas on temporary assignments that last less than a month. Others await a semi-permanent posting for a two or three year stint overseas.

The point that Cohen and the other White House hacks have missed is that protecting the identities of intelligence officers, whether they are working under official or non-official cover, is part of national defense. To compromise these identities is to commit an act of treason.

Patrick Fitzgerald understands that he must prosecute within the confines of the law. However, he also understands that what was done to the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson was more than a rough game of inside the beltway hardball. Karl Rove told Chris Matthews that “Wilson’s wife is fair game”. Not only was she an unfair target, but in going after her the White House political crew unwittingly exposed several intelligence assets and caused the loss of intelligence assets overseas.

Richard Cohen is dead wrong to argue that the best thing Patrick Fitzgerald can do is leave town. To the contrary, the best thing Patrick Fitzgerald can do is a send a clear message to politicians in both parties that when it comes to political hardball intelligence assets must be kept out of the game. At the end of the day our nation’s security is no game, it is a matter of life and death.

Read More

by
Larry C Johnson

With friends like the Italians who needs enemies? If Karl Rove and Scooter Libby are indicted they can shift some of the blame to the Italians. If it were not for Italy, Joe Wilson probably never would have been sent to Africa to investigate the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger and the ensuing chain of events to smear Wilson would not have happened.

New Republican Talking Points on Plame Gate? Crooks & Liars has interviewed Larry Johnson to get his reactions to the remarks made today by “Jack Burkman, self-described Republican strategist” as a panelist on MSNBC’s Connected, along with Air America host Randi Rhodes and co-hosts Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley (video). ……………………………….. Biography: Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.

A careful review of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on the Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (July 2004) shows very clearly that there was only one source claiming that Iraq was buying the uranium. Shades of Curveball! Except in this case the source was not an Iraqi linked to Ahmed Chalabi, but a foreign liaison service. Knowledgeable friends say it was the Italian Intelligence Service (SISME).

SISME provided the CIA with three separate intelligence reports that Iraq had reached an agreement with Niger to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium (October 15, 2001; February 5, 2002; and March 25, 2002). (See Expanded PlameGate Timeline below). The second report from February was the subsequent basis for a DIA analysis, which led Vice President Cheney to ask CIA for more information on the matter. That request led to the CIA asking Ambassador Joe Wilson to go check out the story in Niger.

Even in the much maligned October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the entire intelligence community remained split on the reliability of the Iraq/Niger claim. During briefings subsequent to the publication of the NIE, senior CIA officials repeatedly debunked the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. They also dismissed as unreliable reports from Great Britain, which also were derived from the faulty Italian intelligence reports.

Italy’s SISME also reportedly had a hand in producing the forged documents delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in early October 2003 that purported to show a deal with Iraq to buy uranium. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that a prominent neo-con with longstanding ties to SISME played a role in the forgery. The truth of that proposition remains to be proven. This much is certain, either SISME or someone with ties to SISME, helped forge and circulate those documents which some tried to use to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq.

Although some in the intelligence community, specifically analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), believed the report, the intelligence community as a whole did not put much stock in the reports and forged documents, and repeatedly told policy makers that these reports were not reliable. Despite being rebuffed repeatedly by the intelligence community on these questions, policymakers persisted in trying to make the fraudulent case.

Two weeks before President Bush spoke the infamous 16 words in the January 2003 State of the Union speech, the Department of Defense was fanning the flames about Iraq’s alleged Nigerien uranium shopping trip. Starting in late 2001, senior Department of Defense officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith, provided favored military talking heads with talking points and briefings to reinforce messages the Administration wanted the public to remember. One of those who frequently attended these affairs, Robert Maginnis, published an op-ed on January 15, 2003 subsequent to one of the briefings. In writing about the case for attacking Iraq, Maginnis affirmed that Saddam, “failed to explain why Iraq manufactures fuels suited only for a class of missile that it does not admit to having and why it sought to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger.”

Notwithstanding repeated efforts by intelligence analysts to downplay these intelligence reports as unreliable, DOD officials fanned the flames. This, my friends, is one example of “cooking intelligence.”

These facts further expose as farce the Bush Administration’s effort to blame the CIA for the misadventure in Iraq. We did not go to war in Iraq primarily because of bad intelligence and bad analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Bush Administration started a war of choice.

BELOW, more analysis, and an extended timeline of the case:

Read More

by Larry C. Johnson The investigation into who in the Bush Administration leaked the name of CIA non-official cover case officer, Valerie Plame aka Mrs. Joseph Wilson, is winding down. Unfortunately the media is primed to paint...

Read More

by Larry C. Johnson

Just like a doomed relationship between a wife beater and a woman knocked senseless too many times, the Kurds are discovering that they are in a bad marriage with an abusive spouse. According to various press reports Kurdish leaders, including President Talabani, have complained to Shia Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari that the coalition’s Shia parties, known as the United Alliance, are welching on promises to start work on resettling Kurds in the northern city of Kirkuk and to fairly distribute government positions between the coalition parties.

Gee whiz. The Shias promised to share and now they, by virtue of their status as the majority population in Iraq, are laying claim to their self-perceived right to rule the country as they please. It seems that the Kurds have fallen victim to the same fantasy based approach to policy and politics in Iraq that afflicts the Bush Administration.

Wait! It gets worse. Friends in the intelligence community tell me that some of the more moderate Shias are beginning to grumble because Shia groups allied with Iran are becoming more assertive. In short, Iran will do whatever it takes to ensure that it’s supporters in Iraq come out on top.

Notwithstanding the loud whistling past the graveyard of Iraqi democracy by Bush Administration offiicials and neo-con cheerleaders, the central fact is that the upcoming election to ratify the Iraqi Constitution will do nothing to solve the insurgency and civil war. In fact, regardless of the outcome on October 15, the Iraqi civil war will continue.

The reality of the civil war and the failure of the Iraqi Army to serve as a credible force for the security of the new nation trying to emerge will hit the world square between the eyes. Our senior political and military officials in the United States continued insistence on proclaiming that black is white and up is down is hurting both the American and the Iraqi peoples. We cannot keep saying the Iraqi military is getting stronger when the number of units capable of operating independently decline. We cannot keep saying we are winning the war on terrorism when the number of terrorist attacks keeps increasing and the number of jihadist terrorists expands. And, we cannot continue to describe what is going on in Iraq as the “birth of democracy.”

This kind of delusional mindset may be tolerated in the rubber rooms of psychiatric hospitals but it has no place in the White House or the Green Zone. It would appear that the Kurdish leaders are finally waking up to confront what has been the reality for almost two years–i.e., that the Shia are in a strong position to control the new Iraq and will assert their power in support of their own kind. Maybe President Talabani can talk some sense to President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, General Casey, and General Abizaid about the reality on the ground in Iraq. Until then, we’ll just have to grit our teeth as we watch the “wife beaters” run amuck while our leaders sing the praises of family harmony in Iraq. This is beyond sad, it is dangerous.

Larry C. Johnson
Personal Blog: No Quarter || Bio
Recommended Book List || More BoomanTribune Posts

Read More

By Larry C Johnson George Bush got it partially right yesterday (Thursday, September 22) when he said that mistakes made by three of his predecessors, including the Reagan administration, had emboldened terrorists and helped set...

Read More