Of Richer, Suskind and Habbush. As a friend points out, Rob Richer's denial sure discredits key parts of the CIA's denial. Richer's denial makes clear CIA knew very well where is Habbush -- that Habbush had in fact defected - and CIA had some kind of control of him. Richer: "I do speak to discussions regarding using Habbush, which were frequent during that period, but what I was talking about was the possibility of using him to tamp down the insurgency – not to influence western public opinion." CIA denial implies that it has no idea where Habbush is. CIA: "Nor did CIA pay or resettle Tahir Habbush, Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief. That conclusion comes from a review of our files and checks with our officers. Indeed, our government considers Habbush to be a wanted man." Talk about misleading.

Richer denial says White House/ "downtown" had lots of ideas for how to use Habbush to tamp down the Iraqi insurgency -- most which Richer says he and his colleagues thought were a waste of time. This from Richer interesting too: "During my time as a senior officer, I saw many documents from various offices of the White House regarding many topics. They were, in fact, on white paper. I was asked to respond to documents regarding the potential use of Habbush upon his defection and during the difficult fall of 2003 when we were wrestling with a developing Iraqi insurgency and ways to combat it. I was also involved in many queries from elements of the Administration trying to document an Al-Qa'ida and Saddam government link; proof of which was never found. Many of such queries did originate from the staff of the Office of the Vice President. None of this, however, substantiates Mr. Suskind’s explosive allegation." No. But what Richer says he was asked to do with Habbush and to establish a nonexistent al Qaeda Iraq link by "downtown" in writing would be worth understanding, especially since none of it seemed to make its way into the Senate Intel committee Iraq intelligence reviews at all. Is this documentation which the CIA neglected to give or mention to the Senate Intelligence committee? Richer makes clear there was lots of stuff in writing he was asked to comment on, e.g. actual documents the Senate Intelligence reviews should ostensibly have seen, but apparently did not.

Posted by Laura at August 25, 2008 09:11 AM