Book says White House ordered forgery
By: Mike Allen
Politico
August 5, 2008 11:51 AM EST

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered
the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi
intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that
the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed
to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a
justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from
a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to
stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written
about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for
The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of
Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike
‘was trained by Saddam.’”

The Telegraph story by Con Coughlin (which, coincidentally, ran the day
Hussein was captured in his “spider hole”) was touted in the U.S. media
by supporters of the war, and he was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured
prominently in the United States and across the globe," Suskind writes.
"Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly
Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting,
'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'"

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the
director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of
Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam,
backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11
ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq –
thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam
and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing
CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no
link.”

The White House flatly denied Suskind’s account. Tony Fratto, deputy
White House press secretary, told Politico: “The allegation that the
White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam
is just absurd.”

The White House plans to push back hard. Fratto added: "Ron Suskind
makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and
making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous
bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence."

Before “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of
Extremism,” Suskind wrote two New York Times bestsellers critical of the
Bush administration – “The Price of Loyalty” (2004), which featured
extensive comments by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and “The
One Percent Doctrine” (2006).

Suskind writes in his new book that the order to create the letter was
written on “creamy White House stationery.” The book suggests that the
letter was subsequently created by the CIA and delivered to Iraq, but
does not say how.

The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for
war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to
influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.

Suskind writes that the White House had “ignored the Iraq intelligence
chief’s accurate disclosure that there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to
stop an invasion.

“They secretly resettled him in Jordan, paid him $5 million – which one
could argue was hush money – and then used his captive status to help
deceive the world about one of the era’s most crushing truths: that
America had gone to war under false pretenses,” the book says.

Suskind writes that the forgery “operation created by the White House
and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with” a statute saying the CIA
may not conduct covert operations “intended to influence United States
political processes, public opinion, policies or media.”

“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that
carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind
writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s
knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally
taken up in impeachment proceedings.”

Habbush is still listed as wanted on a State Department website designed
to help combat international terrorism, with the notation: “Up to $1
Million Reward.”

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet says about the supposed forgery, in
a statement: “There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to
the best of my knowledge, was anyone from CIA ever involved in any such
effort.”

NBC’s David Gregory reported on “Today” that Habbush passed his
information in “secret meetings with British intelligence.”

Tenet says about Habbush in the statement: “In fact, the source in
question failed to persuade his British interlocutors that he had
anything new to offer by way of intelligence, concessions, or
negotiations with regard to the Iraq crisis and the British – on their
own – elected to break off contact with him.

“There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately
that Iraq had no WMD – but our foreign intelligence colleagues and we
assessed that these individuals were parroting the Ba’ath party line and
trying to delay any coalition attack. The particular source that Suskind
cites offered no evidence to back up his assertion and acted in an
evasive and unconvincing manner.”

Asked about Tenet's statement by Meredith Vieira on “Today,” Suskind
said it’s “part of George’s memory issue.”

“[b]y placing so much on its secret ledger,” Suskind writes in his final
chapter, “the administration profoundly altered basic democratic ideals
of accountability and informed consent.”

The book (HarperCollins, $27.95) was not supposed to be publicly
available until Tuesday, but Politico purchased a copy Monday night at a
Washington bookstore.

Suskind, an engaging and confident Washingtonian, writes that the book
was “one tough project.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing
as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he worked from 1993 to
2000.

The White House said Suskind received no formal cooperation. He writes
in the acknowledgments section at the end of the book: “It should be
noted that the intelligence sources who are quoted in this book in no
way disclosed any classified information. None crossed the line.”

Among the 415-page book’s other highlights:

--John Maguire, one of two men who oversaw the CIA’s Iraq Operations
Group, was frustrated by what Suskind describes as the “tendency of the
White House to ignore advice it didn’t want to hear – advice that
contradicted its willed certainty, political judgments, or rigid message
strategies.”

And Suskind writes that the administration “did not want to hear the
word insurgency.”

--In the first days of his presidency, Bush rejected advice from the CIA
to wiretap Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2001 in Vienna,
where he was staying in a hotel where the CIA had a listening device
planted in the wall of the presidential suite, in need only of a battery
change. The CIA said that if the surveillance were discovered, Putin’s
respect for Bush would be heightened.

But Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, advised that it
was “too risky, it might be discovered,” Suskind writes. Bush decided
against if as “a gut decision” based on what he thought was a friendship
based on several conversations, including during the presidential
campaign. The CIA had warned him that Putin “was a trained KGB agent …
[who] wants you to think he’s your friend.”

--Suskind reports that Bush initially told Cheney he had to "‘step back’
in large meetings when they were together, like those at the NSC
[National Security Council], because people were addressing and
deferring to Cheney. Cheney said he understood, that he’d mostly just
take notes at the big tables and then he and Bush would meet privately,
frequently, to discuss options and action.”

--Suskind contends Cheney established “deniability” for Bush as part of
the vice president’s “complex strategies, developed over decades, for
how to protect a president.”

“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney
developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or
even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been
over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know –
things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships,
or humiliating to the executive.

“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes
broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from
there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the
president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The
whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable
for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature
of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”

--Suskind is acidly derisive of Bush, saying that he initially lost his
“nerve” on 9/11, regaining it when he grabbed the Ground Zero bullhorn.
Suskind says Bush’s 9 p.m. Oval Office address on the fifth anniversary
was “well along in petulance, seasoned by a touch of self-defensiveness.”

“Moving on its own natural arc, the country is in the process of leaving
Bush – his bullying impulse fused, permanently, with satisfying
vengeance – in the scattering ashes of 9/11,” Suskind writes. “The high
purpose his angry words carried after the attacks, and in two elections
since, is dissolving with each passing minute.”

--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.


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Suskind is a solid reporter, by the way.