Tax exempt Pentagon cut out. WP:

While waiting to be confirmed by the White House for a top civilian post at the Air Force last year, Charles D. Riechers was out of work and wanted a paycheck. So the Air Force helped arrange a job through an intelligence contractor that required him to do no work for the company, according to documents and interviews.

For two months, Riechers held the title of senior technical adviser and received about $13,400 a month at Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, a nonprofit firm in Johnstown, Pa., according to his résumé. But during that time he actually worked for Sue C. Payton, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, on projects that had nothing to do with CRI, he said. ...

Commonwealth Research and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies, are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt charities, even though their primary work is for the Pentagon and other government agencies. In a recent report Concurrent, also based in Johnstown, Pa., said it was among the Defense Department's top 200 contractors, with a focus on intelligence, surveillance, force readiness and advanced materials.

The defense and intel contractor with the "charity" tax code is getting some faith-based work too. Who's their earmarker? Murtha.

Update: A reader writes, "How funny to see your post from Sept 30th about Concurrent Technologies. I worked on a Navy contract 2 years ago and was asked to attend a meeting at Concurrent in Johnstown, PA. There were a bunch of people from the Navy there, the focus of the meeting was building software to assist in parts supply and inventory management. At dinner one night, I got an earful from one of the Navy guys about what a joke the project that Concurrent was working on for them, he called it a 'make work' project. Apparently, Johnstown is in an economically depressed and the DoD is required to award a certain amount of work to companies in economically depressed areas. The fact that they set this company up as a charity may reflect on how they actually viewed the money flowing there."

Seymour Hersh's latest.

Congressional Quarterly's Tim Starks:

President Bush’s nominee to serve as the right-hand man to the nation’s spy chief has been placed on hold in the Senate, multiple sources said.

Donald Kerr, who would fill the long-vacant slot of principal deputy director of National Intelligence, has had a bumpy confirmation procedure. It took the Bush administration more than a year to settle on a candidate for the job, then Kerr came under fire during his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing because of his stewardship of the National Reconnaissance Office’s expensive spy satellite programs.

The panel reported out his nomination Sept. 18 by a vote of 12-3, and he was poised for a floor vote this week. Sources familiar with the status of Kerr’s nomination did not disclose the reason why he was placed on hold, or who was behind it.

Kerr told the panel at his Aug. 1 nomination hearing that he thought he would bring to the job “an ability to identify and deal effectively with troubled components, which I have done in at least two government agencies to this point; a strong technical and management background; coalition-building skills; the ability to drive organizational change; and a strongly held belief that an effective planning system, coupled with strong financial management, can achieve superior results.” ...

The office Kerr directs has come under criticism from senators because of cost overruns with spy satellite projects and other management issues. He has served as director of the National Reconnaissance Office since 2005, and served from 2001 to 2005 as deputy director for science and technology at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Bill Gertz: FBI chief orders internal review of Weldon investigation leak. History would suggest that FBI reviews of FBI leaks somehow don't get very far. Also: "Mr. Weldon declined to comment on the probe, but a person familiar with the former congressman's thinking said he believes the Justice Department and FBI deliberately sought to sabotage his re-election bid by disclosing the probe in the press within days of the election. Mr. Weldon suspects that careerists and Democratic Party sympathizers in the Justice Department worked covertly with former Clinton administration officials to defeat him and to elect Mr. Sestak, according to the person." Who do you think was so familiar with Weldon's thinking and sounded so very like Weldon? I have a guess.

Giuliani, Thompson, Romney, McCain skip debate on black issues.

NY Sun: Ex-Cheney advisor David Wurmser denies trying to stir war with Iran.

Rue89's latest on the media and Debat.

A Hill veteran sends along the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran (.pdf), saying it may come up for a vote as early as tomorrow. "In particular, take a look at Section (5) in the Operative portion." He adds, "This will be a hard amendment for Members to oppose ... because a no vote can be spun as 'You don’t care about Iranian munitions killing American troops.'”

Tuesday Update: "Votes got postponed until tomorrow morning, but Kyl-Lieberman is on tap for tomorrow. Schumer allegedly working on a side by side. Levin will likely vote yes, while ... Reid is likely to vote no. ... The alternative will still condemn iran, but probably use less inflammatory language and likely make clear that it is not authorizing force in any manner."

Wednsday Update: "It passed 76-22. They agreed to remove Sections 3 and 4 from the operative portion of the amendment, which included the language many feared as a backdoor authorization for force. So it was much better. That said, the language on the IRGC designation as a terrorist organization remained. Remember, this was just a Sense of Senate and has no binding force. But that may strengthen the hand of [those] inside the Administration who are arguing for designation of the entire IGRC, not just the Qods Force or other individual elements." Here's a breakdown of the vote.

Politico: Podhoretz's audience with Bush, Rove to urge bombing Iran.

C-Span2 has live video feed of Ahmadinejad press conference. Update: C-Span3 has Ahmadinejad at Columbia. He's getting heckled for saying "In Iran we do not have homosexuals like in your country. ... I don't know who has told you that we have it." He's invited Columbia students and faculty to Iran, and is thanking Columbia University for believing in the freedom of speech. "I ask Almighty God to help all of us to extend peace and justice and brotherhood." Columbia president Lee Bollinger implying Ahmadinejad leaving before he answered all their questions. Video here, via Andrew Golis.

WP's Peter Baker: Bush seems to be contemplating turning Iraq over to HRC.

AP: Federal prosecutors investigate alleged Blackwater arms smuggling, whether arms ended up in PKK hands, Turkey.

The LA Jewish Journal interviews Sy Hersh (via the Forward): "The bottom line is nobody in this government talks to me."

I'll be on NPR's On the Media this weekend, discussing the Debat story (link), along with an ABC representative, Jeff Schneider (link); as well as on NPR Philadelphia affiliate WHYY, Radio Times, on Monday (link, at about 34:00). Rue89 deserves full credit for breaking this story, a point that seemed to get cut out of one of the interviews in the editing.

Ha'aretz on an alleged leak:

The political and defense establishments reacted with fury on Thursday to opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent confirmation of an Israeli operation in Syria two weeks ago.

In what appears to be the first confirmation by a senior politician of foreign media reports, MK Benjamin Netanyahu told Channel One television that he was party to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to attack Syria, an operation on which Israeli officials have remained uncharacteristically silent.

Labor Party secretary-general, Eitan Cabel, said to Army Radio that Netanyahu's words were "an outburst that is severe, stupid and irresponsible."

"Bibi [Netanyahu] is the same Bibi. I haven no idea if it is foolishness, stupidity, the desire to jump on the bandwagon, the desire to be a partner, to steal credit - or something else. It is simply very dangerous. The man simply does not deserve to lead," Cabel told Army Radio.

In an interview with Channel One news anchor Haim Yavin, Netanyahu shocked the Prime Minister's Office when he said that he was briefed on Olmert's decision to carry out an operation in Syria, gave him his backing and congratulated him.

"When the prime minister takes action in important and necessary matters, and generally when the government is doing things for the security of Israel, I give it my endorsement," he said. "I was party to this matter, I must say, from the first minute and I gave it my backing, but it is still too early to discuss this subject." ...

In response to the interview, sources close to Olmert said that "Bibi's slip of the tongue borders national irresponsibility."

An official said Tuesday that "once again Netanyahu couldn't restrain himself and he ran to tell the guys." ...

POGO's Nick Schwellenbach points out that State IG Howard Krongard, under investigation by congressman Waxman, over among other things whether he stymied probes into Blackwater, is the brother of former CIA executive director Buzzy Krongard, who Ken Silverstein has reported, helped grow Blackwater's government business.

Gates, Brooks, and Iraq. Guest post from Jeff Lomonaco, assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota:

David Brooks, newly liberated from TimesSelect, went to Robert Gates' big "realist view of democracy promotion" speech the other day and spoke with him afterwards. Among other things:

I asked him whether invading Iraq was a good idea, knowing what we know now. He looked at me for a bit and said, "I don't know."

Is it not extraordinary that George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense is unwilling and unable to affirm that the Iraq war was a good idea?

More from Belgravia Dispatch.

Newsweek: a secret lobbying campaign:

The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs.

The campaign—which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms—has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community—or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say the U.S. intelligence community is in a near-panic about this,” said one communications industry lawyer familiar with the debate who asked not to be publicly identified because of the sensitivity surrounding the issue.

More from Marcy Wheeler who has been on this issue and the fact that telco lobbyist Ed Gillespie has been working for some time in the White House for a long while.

Kian Tajbakhsh released in Iran.

Just Out: a new piece, explaining "Debat's Pentagon Links."

HPSCI members subpoenaed by alleged Cunningham co-conspirator Brent Wilkes. Federation of American Scientist's Steve Aftergood posts the letters to House speaker from HPSCI chair Reyes and former chair Hoekstra.

More from Portfolio's Scot Paltrow. Looks like the Congressmen plan to resist.

Update: Paul Kiel has more.

NYT: Music scholar barred from the U.S. but no one will tell her why.

Update: My friend Andras writes, "DHS is trying to prevent violins against Americans?"

Given his vigorous rebuttals and claims that he has faked nothing and that he is the victim of a conspiracy, it's worth pointing out that Debat was still presenting himself in academic/journalistic/policy circles as actively with ABC more than a month after he was forced to resign.

Below a redacted email removing identifying details from a post he sent to a list in which he portrayed himself as an active consultant with ABC's Brian Ross unit more than a month after he was forced to resign from the network for misrepresenting his CV, as several officials there have confirmed to me:

Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:04:09 -0400
From: Alexis Debat
In response to [redacted]

while I do not disagree with him on the strong ideological bent of [redacted], the investigative unit at ABC News (for which I am a consultant on terrorism issues, although I do not deal with [redacted], only uses her to provide [redacted]. We do not ask her for comment, analysis, or information other than when and where [redacted].

We conduct our own translation and our own analysis on the documents. I
and others at ABC are very aware of [redacted], and the Brian Ross unit always goes to great length to avoid being partisan in its reporting.

All the best,
Alexis Debat

An ABC executive says there could have been no question in Debat's mind about his status at the point of the above email. "Crystal clear. ... [He was asked to resign] in early to mid june. His work had been suspended immediately on may 31."

Debat working for the Pentagon? Alexis Debat is telling people he still has some arrangement as an analyst or contributor with Andy Marshall's shop in the Pentagon, the Office of Net Assessment. An arrangement that he told people has not been interrupted by recent revelations of the fraudulent interviews he published in France.

As I first reported on Friday, "Sources also say that Debat claimed in the spring to have received a 'large chunk of money' from the Pentagon to conduct a study concerning radical Islam." I have since learned that he was preparing a study on Islamic warfare, perhaps for Andy Marshall.

He's apparently convinced some that the faked interview episode is an opera bouffe misunderstanding brought about by different journalistic practices between the United States and France. And some people apparently prepared to buy it.

Update: The Pentagon has gotten back to me and indicated its contract is with one of Debat's employers, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

A former U.S. government officer tells me that he personally told a top ABC producer last year who called him for some reason, that Debat "is a phony." He says he was told by this producer, that Debat "had developed sources," and was proving himself, etc. etc. This is the same producer ABC has been reportedly planning to send to investigate Debat's stories.

Says the former US official who says he warned ABC about Debat: "What are they trying to accomplish [with their investigation?] They are going to meet with some alleged Pakistani intelligence official [Debat's source]? They are fishing in waters they do not understand."

Update: Spoke with the ABC producer, Rhonda Schwartz, who my former US government source remembers telling that Debat is a "phony." She says that she recollects the conversation and that he said that Debat is not former French intelligence. She said ABC already knew that he was a former French Ministry of Defense desk officer, a fact they had already verified with the Ministry more than once. 2) She says that the timing of the conversation occurred when Debat was already under review by ABC, a personnel matter she could not reveal to him at the time, although that was not the reason she had called him.

Former government officer agrees after talking with Schwartz that that is when the conversation about Debat took place.

ABC SVP Jeff Schneider says the investigation is being led by Kerry Smith, veteran reporter/producer, SVP, Editorial Quality for ABC News. Rhonda Schwartz is being sent to Pakistan to go and speak with sources on the ground there. Network insider adamant there is no talk of an independent investigation.

(This post have been updated).

ABC appears to have removed all of Debat's stories from the website.

Update to Annotated ABC Jundullah post below. Spoke with Brian Ross, who says among other things that "I feel very comfortable with the thrust of that [Jundullah] report. ... We really did have a number of U.S. and European government sources who walked us through that story, which essentially is [that] the U.S. is not funding that group, but is offering advice and guidance and is in contact with that group." He couldn't provide more details on the record but could say that "We feel comfortable wih sources not from Debat that the U.S. has at least contact with and communication with that group on an ongoing basis ... to help fight al Qaeda."

Background from me here and Pascal Riche's latest here.

A new statement from Debat is available here.

Annotating the ABC Debat Jundullah Story. A striking comment by ABC's Brian Ross. NYT:

ABC News has sent a producer to Pakistan as part of its second investigation into reports involving Mr. Debat. One report it is re-examining concerned a guerrilla organization called Jundullah, which, ABC reported in April, had the support of the United States and Pakistan for operations that led to the kidnapping and murder of several Iranian officials.

Pakistani officials ferociously denied the report, calling it “an absurd and sinister insinuation.” ABC announced that it was standing by its reporting and quoted Mr. Debat, saying that he had “just returned from the region.” Brian Ross, the correspondent who worked most closely with Mr. Debat, said the Jundullah story had many sources.

“We’re only worried about the things Debat supplied, not about the substance of that story,” he said.

Does Ross really dismiss the importance of whether the substance of what he reported is true?

That story represents among the most problematic of the Debat-Ross collaborations. And it's no small matter perhaps that Ross's name is on it.

My annotated version of that story suggests that the key allegations in the piece were sourced by Mr. Debat, ABC used Debat as a confirming expert analyst in the piece for dubious information he himself supplied, and that other sources cited in the piece deny the basic gist of the report. Brian Ross and Christopher Isham, "The Secret War Against Iran," ABC, April 3, 2007:

Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report:

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News. [[Annotation: This is disingenuous right from the beginning if you read through. Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC, e.g. DEBAT. US sources tell ABC the allegation is false.]]]

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran. [[Annotation: A background fact]]

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials. [[Annotation: A background fact]]

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.[[Annotation: Information supplied by Debat from his Pakistani "tribal sources." One is right to be highly skeptical that Debat's reporting with his tribal sources is any more credible or real than his interview with Barack Obama. And unlike Barack Obama, the tribal sources do not have a spokesman who ordinary mortals who watch ABC can easily access. What's to stop a fabricator from fabricating what very few people can figure out? Also notice another little device used here. The implication is that it is US money for Jundallah that is being laundered through the exiles. Network doesn't assert it outright, but allows it to be implied.]]

Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.[[Annotation: Background fact.]]

The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.[[Annotation: background fact.]]

"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.[[[Annotation: Debat not only brought ABC the "tribal sources"' information, but is being used to comment on his own information and the context as a confirming expert source!]]]

"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said. [[[Annotation: More Debat commenting on his own reporting as a kind of confirming source.]]]

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan. [[Annotation: Background wire type news, serves as filler for substance of report supplied primarily by Debat]]

Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack. [[Annotation: again, wire news filler]]

They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in Pakistan. [[Annotation: wire type news filler/background]]

The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot. [[Annotation: here, Iranian state television, not known for its independence or lack of paranoia about the Zionists or the Great Statan or CIA, is helping ABC bolster its allegation that the CIA is supporting the Jundullah. Not a credible source, but a good picture. Also interesting: ABC doesn't say straight out that the CIA is supporting Jundullah. But viewers see a picture even from such a highly dubious source that makes that association.]]

A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group. [[[Annotation: this means that ABC -- not Debat, who has said his sources on this story were not US intelligence -- called a CIA spokesman who DENIED THE STORY. A small detail. But at the top of the story, the reporters have told you Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials make the claim that the US has been advising and encouraging Jundullah since 2005. You find a reference in this piece to U.S. intelligence officials making that claim.]]]

Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.[[[Annotation: Pakistani government sources channelled or concocted by Debat. Is Debat's source with the details of the topics discussed at the meeting between Cheney and Musharraf any more real than his interview with Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Alan Greenspan and Kofi Annan? Who knows? The next day, ABC CARRIES A DENUNCIATION by Pakistani officials saying this is not true.]]]

A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context. [[[Annotation: Purely background information on the group provided by a U.S. government source that neither confirms nor denies the substance of the report, seemingly used to try to bolster a veneer of having multiply sourced this when the main substance of the report came from Debat's Pakistani "tribal sources" and his alleged Middle East intelligence operative sources]].

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s. [[[Annotation: Getting the old timers to reminisce about the good old days. Not confirmation of "the arrangement" at all, but a device used to fluff and suggest it is.]]]

Are Debat's interviews with tribal sources -- which form the very essence of this report -- any more real than his interviews with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Nancy Pelosi, and Kofi Annan? The evidence says no. History shows no. Knowledgeable regional experts say no. That people who fabricate something as easily, provably deniable as an interview with Senators and presidential candidates and the UN Secretary General cannot be trusted to be telling the truth about what the Pakistani tribal sources are telling them is, of course, obvious. The capacity for an extraordinary degree of mendacity demonstrated by Debat claiming to have conducted such high profile fake interviews speaks for itself.

Notice no where in the above report does a US or other official confirm what Debat is providing and the story is asserting. And that ABC used Debat as the channeled reporter on the main substance of the piece, providing the information from the tribal sources, and then featured him as a confirming commenter/analyst in the report. It's a sleight of hand an ordinary viewer might not have noticed, but nevertheless not worthy of a serious news organization that cares about telling its viewers and readers the truth.

In other words, if you remove the information provided by Mr. Debat in this report, and his presence in the report as an expert analyst, there would be nothing there but background information on Jundullah, and U.S. officials denying the report.

See this update.

Iraq Progress Retort. A knowledgeable correspondent writes:

This week started off strong for the administration, with both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker presenting the best case for modest security (and minor political) gains in Iraq, leading up to Thursday’s Presidential address and the release on Friday of the official White House “progress” report on the surge giving Iraq passing marks on 9 of 18 Congressionally-mandated benchmarks. However, a closer look at some of the claims advanced by Petraeus, Crocker, and the administration generates serious doubts, and a spate of bad news this week on the ground in Iraq suggests—surprise, surprise—that we are a long way from genuine progress.

Body count. Several discussions of Iraqi civilian casualties suggest that security gains are far less dramatic than the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker indicated (see here and here). And those familiar with the method of collection used by the U.S. military suggest that they are probably underestimating total deaths. We also have to keep all these recent numbers in perspective. When compared with levels of violence since the beginning of the war, the present situation still looks quite bleak. Check out the tables presented in this Economist piece. Last, but not least, amazing street-level analysis of Baghdad neighborhoods by the NYT provides reason to be skeptical of administration claims of dramatic security gains.
Anbar anomalies. Much has been made of the Anbar awakening by proponents of the surge, but the revolt of Sunni sheiks against al Qaeda in Iraq pre-dated the surge, is by and large not a byproduct of the surge, and has done little to advance Sunni-Shia reconciliation. It will be difficult to import the model successfully to less homogenous areas of Iraq, and the experiment could easily backfire by exacerbating Shia fears (thereby derailing national compromise) or empowering groups that escalate the civil war (see also here). As if this wasn’t challenging enough, there are now signs that Sunni tribal groups may be turning on each other. Exhibit A: the murder this week of Abu Risha, the head of the Anbar Salvation Council and the man Bush shook hands with in Anbar the week before the Petraeus testimony, which may have been carried out by tribal competitors. There is no firm evidence for tribal involvement yet—and Abu Risha’s rivals publicly lamented his death and alternated between blaming the Iraq government and calling for revenge against al Qaeda in Iraq, which has claimed credit for the attack—but if it turns out to have been an inside job, the tribal alliance could implode.

JAM on it. Surprisingly little was said about Moqtada al-Sadr during this week’s hearings and the presidential address, even though Sadr sits atop the most powerful political movement and largest Shia militia in Iraq. News that U.S. forces have been negotiating with elements of the Sadrist movement behind the scenes is a welcome sign. But like outreach to Sunni tribes, the full implications of these negotiations are as of yet unknown. Indeed, this smells like an effort by Sadr to get us to help him purge forces he can’t control. This is a good way to eliminate “extremists,” but we should not assume that Sadr and what is left of the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) will be “cooperative” once this process is complete. After all, these guys are not pro-American nor fans of continuing occupation.
Oil spill. As Iraq rapidly devolves into a highly decentralized state, there is no hope for stability without a deal on oil that makes Sunni areas economically viable. This makes oil legislation among the most important benchmarks. Yet in another sign that national reconciliation is going nowhere, the oil law drafted in February is unraveling over the fundamental clash between those parties that want regional control over oil resources (the Kurds, the Shia south) and those who don’t (Sunnis).
So, where are we? Not the happy place the administration claims. We’ve seen very limited and incredibly fragile progress in the security arena, and we have an administration going full steam ahead with a strategy that banks everything on gaining and maintaining cooperation from a series of actors that hate us and hate each other. Given the stakes, I hope they pull it off, but if Iraq has taught us anything, hope is not a plan and hope is usually dashed. And the longer we stay in Iraq, the higher the costs in blood and treasure, the greater the strains on the military, and the more difficult it becomes to address contingencies elsewhere. This may explain why so many other senior military officers favor a faster draw down than either the President or General Petraeus, and why relations between Petraeus and his superiors are not as rosy as his testimony suggested (see here and here).

Just Out: "Subject to Debat: What Did ABC Know, and When Did It Know It?"

... Interviews with journalists, think tank associates, and a former government official indicate that there were warning signs about Debat for years—even within the network itself. Two journalists familiar with Debat’s work point to ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross not only as the victim of Debat’s alleged deceptions, but as an enabler, who has promoted sensational stories—including some that Debat brought the network—at the expense at times of rigorous journalism standards. (Ross did not return Mother Jones’ phone call by press time, although an ABC executive has been in touch by phone and email.) They also say that they do not believe ABC has properly investigated Debat’s reporting at all.

The two key questions to ask ABC, one source familiar with Ross’ unit who asked to speak on background, are: “How is ABC investigating the information: Is it only being investigated by the Ross unit, or are outside reporters doing it? And in vetting or second-sourcing information brought to the network [by Debat], were resources outside of the Ross unit used?” The AP reported late Thursday that ABC was sending long time Ross producer Rhonda Schwartz to Pakistan to investigate some of Debat’s stories.

Overall, the picture of Debat that emerges from these interviews is of a smart, ambitious and cunning operator who would claim to be getting text messages from Middle Eastern intelligence operatives while at meetings with Ross and others at ABC, with tips that seemed too good to be true (which some colleagues believe were bogus), yet were used as “exclusives.”

Sources provided multiple examples of stories that Ross—often with Debat’s contributions—reported, only to be forced to run a correction the next day. For instance, one source noted, on September 5 last year, Ross reported that a Pakistani general had said that Pakistan would leave Osama bin Laden alone as long as he didn’t cause any trouble. The Pakistani government angrily denied it, and the next day the ABC investigative unit’s blog, the Blotter ran a correction.

Another ABC news story largely sourced to Debat – claiming that the U.S. government was advising and encouraging an Iranian Baluchi separatist group Jundullah which was carrying out attacks against the Iranian regime – was followed by an ABC report the next day carrying a "sharply-worded" denunciation from the Pakistani government.

One ethical issue raised by ABC's handling of Debat concerns the investigative unit's use of paid sources and consultants, who are often put on monthly retainer. But in ABC's use of Debat as a paid consultant who also had for the past year and a half an appointment at the Nixon Center, ABC also frequently had him reporting as a seeming journalist on its blog, the Blotter, and appearing as a "source" inside other stories, blurring the line between source (and a paid one at that, with outside -- also paid -- affiliations) and a journalist, not clearly identified in the report. ABC also sent Debat frequently abroad, to gather information which he would put on the air and on the investigative unit's website. ...

And among my scooplets, this: "Sources say that Debat claimed in the spring to have received a 'large chunk of money' from the Pentagon to conduct a study concerning radical Islam; when I inquired about the contract, Defense Department officials said they would check into it."

Stay tuned . . . and I can be contacted here.

Update: Here is the "Washington Dispatch" version of the piece, subhedline: "The network says it acted quickly when it discovered consultant Alexis Debat had misrepresented his credentials. But sources say a real investigation of his work is beginning only now."

More questions for ABC:

How did ABC choose to use Debat as a consultant, and also on the blog as a reporter, also sometimes citing him as a source?

Did ABC inform its viewers and readers that Debat had a Pentagon contract? How clear was ABC in telling readers/viewers about Debat's multiple paid affiliations?

What other consultants have this sort of arrangement with ABC? Will ABC be more transparent in the future about whether its sources are being paid, what are the relevant other potential conflicts of interest in terms of paid other appointments and contracts?

Why is ABC only sending an investigator to Pakistan to investigate Debat's reports now? History shows that people who misreprsent their resumes tend to misrepresent lots of other things as well. Why do my sources say ABC did not conduct a more extensive investigation of his work when it asked him to resign back in June? Why had it not contacted until now other reporters who could help investigate his reports? ...

A longer list here. As I write at the end, "One good thing has according to sources apparently come of the recent reports, including Riche's. Finally, three months after dismissing him, ABC finally appears to be undertaking a serious investigation of the accuracy of reports Debat contributed to. It's just curious it didn't do so when it learned of misrepresentations with his CV back in June when it asked him to resign."

Just Out: an interview with Doug Farah, co-author of a new book on blood diamonds arms dealer and transport services provider Viktor Bout. Don't miss Farah tonight on The Daily Show.

More fake interviews: Pelosi, Greenspan, Gates, Annan. And don't miss the Thursday update here and here.

The Nixon Center's executive director Paul Saunders writes:

Dear Ms. Rozen,

Nick Gvosdev at The National Interest forwarded to me your inquiry about his identification in an article for our long-discontinued online weekly In the National Interest as well as your phone message asking about his statements regarding U.S. military contingency plans related to Iran.

First, I should tell you that Alexis Debat is no longer affiliated with The Nixon Center or The National Interest. He resigned yesterday for personal reasons. Also, strictly for clarification, his former role as a contributing editor to the magazine was unpaid and was not a staff position; he was compensated strictly for individual contributions on a case-by-case basis.

Regarding his 2003 piece for In the National Interest, Alexis Debat was not affiliated with the magazine or The Nixon Center at that time. Thus, like most publications dealing with outside contributors, we relied on him to provide a brief description of his background rather than conducting a detailed investigation of our own. Also, we knew independently about his affiliation with ABC--one of several he mentioned--and saw no reason to question someone essentially endorsed by ABC, which would have its own sources in Paris and considerable investigative capabilities. We later received confirmation of his work at Middlebury. More generally, we assumed, like most others in such circumstances, that someone writing in a public forum and seeking to maintain his credibility would provide accurate information. We also expect in these situations that there is a self-correcting mechanism available to us, namely, that if there were indeed errors, others would bring them to our attention. In this case, the piece was circulated widely and even sent to French Embassy officials. Other French Embassy officials have often attended our meetings. Yours is the first inquiry about his identification in that piece, which is now four years old.

Regarding the statements on Iran, they were his personal statements, not institutional ones, and were in a public meeting with other experts where they could be easily challenged by anyone with different information or a different perspective. We are certainly not in a position to pre-screen statements by experts during public events. Also, because we believed he was still at ABC at the time, we assumed that he could have access to sources not available to others. From what I understand, video of the discussion is available from C SPAN if you would like to see both his statements and the context in which they were made. Certainly, however, it is widely known that the U.S. military prepares contingency plans for a wide variety of eventualities and it is plausible that plans of some kind exist in relation to Iran. More broadly, individuals who make statements of this kind often attract scrutiny and, if they expect to maintain their credibility as experts over time, are careful about what they say.

I hope this is helpful.

Sincerely,

Paul Saunders

Posted with permission.

Rob Sherman. Am interviewing the real, or at least one of the real, Rob Sherman(s) now. He says he has never heard of Alexis Debat. He has interviewed Barack Obama for the Rob Sherman show on WJJG (AM 1530), in Chicago. He says he has subscribed to the Chicago Tribune for twenty years and would have noticed if there was a reporter there with that name. "I am a big deal," Sherman tells me. "I am a major star. I would never do interviews for someone else. People fake things all the time. Look what Bush did to get us into Iraq."

Stranger and stranger.

As I sit here on the phone with him, Sherman is checking out the address on a fax Debat provided purporting to be from a 'Rob Sherman' who allegedly conducted his interview with Obama for a fee of $500. Sherman is saying there is a 173 E. Taylor Road in Lombard, IL. The number indicated on the fax is tel. (630) 598.2960. Sherman is saying "598" is a landline based in Downer's Grove. He's going to try to see what's going on and get back to me. He says he got a voice mail there. "If you'd like to leave a message," in a computer voice. Left a message.

Sherman does say he's been called three times in the past month by people trying to verify the truth of the matter. He says he didn't know they were. Major news operations. One from NY newspaper. One may have been from Washington Post. And one call from France. He doesn't recall if he got called by ABC.

"People fake stuff all the time," says Sherman.

Update: Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove with the radio show emails to Debat, copying me:

I've received several inquiries from across the United States and also from France regarding a purported article that "Rob Sherman" supposedly wrote for you. I am the only prominent Rob Sherman in the Chicago area -- see my web site at www.robsherman.com - and, obviously, I've never heard of you nor worked with you regarding my friend, Barack Obama. In response to one reporter's inquiry, I've never worked for the Chicago Tribune, but they've written many stories about me (perhaps as many as 500 stories) in the past 20 years pertaining to my social activism. In addition, I do not now nor have I ever lived nor worked in Lombard, Illinois, which is about 15 miles from my home and office in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

What is all this stuff about?

Best regards,
Rob Sherman

Is there another Rob Sherman in Chicago who did do the interview with Obama?

And who did the interview with Greenspan that Debat published, which Greenspan tells Pascal Riche he did not provide?

More here.

A moment of sober honesty. Guest post by University of Minnesota political science professor Jeff Lomonaco:

David Petraeus' striking refusal the other day to affirm that achieving the objectives he is pursuing in Iraq will make the U.S. safer deserves a little closer scrutiny. I think it reflects not that he has not thought about the question, but that he has genuine doubts about whether the entire war was a mistake. Nor did his subsequent modification of his answer, acting at the behest or request of the White House, remove those doubts.

Petraeus' initial response to Sen. Warner that he did not know if success in Iraq would make the U.S. safer can be explained neither by fatigue nor by the notion that Petraeus has focused exclusively on the mission in front of him. Any member of the Bush administration, no matter how tired, would know, whatever complexities you embed in the substance of the response, the lede is, "Yes, without doubt." Petraeus is also a smart and thoughtful guy surrounded by smart and thoughtful people, many of whom have devoted much time and energy to considering the larger effort to make the U.S. safer by targeting terrorists that threaten us and winning hearts and minds globally. It's just not credible that Petraeus has focused so narrowly on his mission that he has not thought about the larger strategy and policy of which it is a part. Furthermore, it is known that some of those around Petraeus view the Iraq war altogether as a terrible mistake foisted on us by misguided neoconservatives. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that Petraeus shares that view, however much those same neoconservatives serve as the base for his envisioned presidential plans.

Petraeus' subsequent modification of his answer, after hearing concerns from the White House during a break in the hearings, in fact bolsters that idea. Because when Petraeus used a question from Sen. Bayh to say that yes, achieving our objectives in Iraq would make us safer, he had clearly changed the baseline of comparison. His answer to Bayh took the policy of going to war as a given, and, focusing on Iraq alone, made the obvious point that success will be better for our national security than failure. The very fact that he did not say this initially in response to Sen. Warner suggests that he was using as his baseline of comparison the very decision to go to war itself.

There is no question that there has been far too much, and far too personalized, attention on Petraeus. His views are only one contribution to the debate about what we should do in Iraq, and in the world. But it is overstatement to say that his advice on Iraq is almost useless. Surely it is very useful to learn that the commander of our forces in Iraq, and the man behind whom the President has hidden, has doubts about whether the war in Iraq was a mistake because it may have made us less safe.

Lomonaco is co-author of The United States v. I. Lewis Libby. He can be reached here.

WP: Members of Senate Intel committee seek CIA general counsel nominee's withdrawal.

This is not a middle way. Guest Post by "Irack Observer":

In the lead up to his speech on Iraq tonight, Bush is warring with the Democrats over the definition of the “middle way” in Iraq. Bush is attempting to frame the draw down of American forces to pre-surge levels (to around 130,000 by the summer of 2008) suggested by General Petraeus during his testimony this week as both a choice and a compromise bipartisan position. It is neither. The surge was always going to end in the spring and summer of 2008 as units deployed this year began to rotate home. It could not be prolonged without extending Army tours from 15 to 18 months or massively mobilizing the National Guard and Reserve—options nobody thinks are viable. So, the “unsurge” is a structural imperative, not a choice, not a compromise, and not a middle way. Bush’s framing is simply a cynical attempt to spin the inevitable as bold (indeed, the added strain on the Army and Marines from the surge will likely force deeper cuts in the late summer and fall of 2008 regardless of circumstances on the ground, which the administration and Republicans will undoubtedly also try to take credit for).

Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership in Congress is signaling a new willingness to find an Iraq strategy capable of peeling moderate Republicans away from the president perhaps along the lines recommended by the Iraq Study Group or the Center for a New American Security. These proposals would responsibly withdraw most forces conducting combat operations, focus on enhanced training and advising of Iraqi Security Forces, and place considerably more emphasis on diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Along similar lines, Barack Obama gave a major Iraq speech yesterday in Iowa calling for a withdrawal of American forces engaged in combat, while leaving a residual presence to conduct counterterrorism and training activities and emphasizing political measures and international involvement to resolve Iraq’s sectarian disputes. The proof that these are the true “middle way” positions can be found in the rapid attack they have received from Bush’s enablers at AEI and the Weekly Standard.

There are now two scenarios unfolding in Washington. The most likely one is that Bush will go full-steam ahead until the end of his term, keeping the maximum sustainable military presence on the ground in Iraq while portraying incremental reductions forced by structural constraints as “conditions-based withdrawals rooted in success.” However, in the absence of a political breakthrough at the national level in Iraq, which seems unlikely, this is a pathway to strategic and political exhaustion in the United States by late 2008, increasing the odds that the next President will pull the plug altogether. A second scenario would be a real bipartisan middle way emanating from Congress and forced on the administration that would reconceptualize and narrow American interests in Iraq, and begin a transition to a new approach intended to advance these more limited objectives. This is strategically and politically wise, but, to succeed, it would require substantial planning and preparation by the administration and the military now. This isn’t happening and isn’t likely to happen. Given the administration’s twisted interpretation of “middle way” and the organized attacks by surge cheerleaders on realistic bipartisan positions, the administration is on course to leave the next President a mess and no viable plan for smoothly transitioning out of Iraq. Well, at least they will help “end” the war the way it began!

"Irack Observer" is an academic and practitioner who has conducted research on the U.S. military and the Iraq war, has travelled to Iraq, and seeks to inform the ongoing debate.

Tribal Assassination. Guest Post by "Irack Observer":

Marc Lynch has a terrific post on the implications of the murder of Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the head of the Anbar Salvation Council and the poster-child for surge proponents of success in forging cooperative relations with Sunni tribes to go after al Qaeda in Iraq. Go read it here. This is terrible for the White House and the current strategy. Not only is this the guy Bush (in)famously shook hands with during his recent stop in Anbar, but if it turns out that he was killed either by other tribal leaders or groups associated with the government, the entire narrative of "the tribes" (which suggests a unified entity) or bottom-up "reconciliation" will collapse like a house of cards.

"Irack observer" is an academic and practitioner who has conducted research on the U.S. military and the Iraq war, has travelled to Iraq, and seeks to inform the ongoing debate. He can be reached at irackobserver@gmail.com

Newsweek: Spymaster Michael Mcconnell Admits Error:

In a new embarrassment for the Bush administration top spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany.

... On Monday, McConnell—questioned by Sen. Joe Lieberman—claimed the law, intended to remedy what the White House said was an intelligence gap, had helped to “facilitate” the arrest of three suspects believed to be planning massive car bombings against American targets in Germany. Other U.S. intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell's testimony and urged his office to correct it. Four intelligence-community officials, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive material, said the new law, dubbed the "Protect America Act,” played little if any role in the unraveling of the German plot. The U.S. military initially provided information that helped the Germans uncover the plot. But that exchange of information took place months before the new “Protect America” law was passed.

After questions about his testimony were raised, McConnell called Lieberman to clarify his statements to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, an official said. (A spokeswoman for Lieberman confirmed that McConnell called the senator Tuesday but could not immediately confirm what they spoke about.) Late Wednesday afternoon, McConnell issued a statement acknowleding that "information contributing to the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided by the 'Protect America Act'."

ABC News investigates. More in the updates here too, including a new allegation of a faked interview with Alan Greenspan (scroll down to Update 12/9). My own feeling as primarily a print world reporter, and this is just one part of the complicated matter, is that it is deeply problematic for a news organization to have a paid source/consultant to sometimes put on the reporter hat and act as the reporter too. (Indeed, I don't like the idea of paid sources at all, but it seems to be a frequent practice at TV news networks). Seriously, imagine if a New York Times reporter put an ex NSC or CIA operative on the payroll for about $2,000 to $4,000 a month as a source, cited in articles as a source, and then sometimes let him or her report news stories with a byline, without glaringly indicating to readers what was going on. But this is what ABC was doing with Debat. ABC must have known they were stretching the rules on this one. For instance, their consultant Richard Clarke is never presented as the reporter. But ABC changed the rules in the Debat case, presumably because he was bringing them such sexy scoops, that they loved flacking at the time. Now they insist the scoops were solid, but Debat misrepresented his credentials. They're blameless.

Update: Howard Kurtz.

Thursday Update: I am a bit mystified that Kurtz failed to contact Pascal Riche who broke this story of the faked interviews. The story seemed a bit thinly reported, featuring only Debat saying he was scammed, and Brian Ross saying he was scammed. What about the substance? Kurtz didn't seem to break a sweat on this one. Is there a real media reporter around who is going to take this on? This is a guy telling the world media from several respected perches that there's a three day blitz planned to bomb Iran. It's not an uninteresting question, whether the information is solid, or is embellished, or is fabricated. It certainly creates a big echo, and is an interesting example of how misinformation or even disinformation can work. Kurtz didn't for instance, raise the question I raised above, which is blindingly obvious: did ABC bend the rules by paying a source who also served as their reporter while having a full time appointment elsewhere, smoothing over any complications by calling him an all purpose "consultant"? How much did Brian Ross approve the unusual arrangement and independently verify the information Debat was bringing from the dark corners of Pakistan? IF, and I emphasize if, Debat faked interviews for a French journal, what was to keep him from faking interviews that informed multiple stories for ABC? I fiind it implausible that ABC has independently re-reported all that stuff so quickly and determined it's kosher.

Brandon Friedman reports at DailyKos, two of the seven soldiers who wrote the recent oped in the NYT, "The War as We Saw It," have been killed. "Yance T. Gray and Omar Mora died Monday in a vehicle accident in Baghdad. The AP has reported on Yance Gray here, and KHOU, a Houston-area TV station has reported on Omar Mora here. Their families have been notified. I have confirmed through a source in Iraq that these are indeed the same soldiers who penned the op-ed piece."

CNN's Christiane Amanpour: Sources confirm Israeli strike on Syria. Yediot Ahranot: Israel targeted Iranian weapons in Syria.

Update: Mideast analyst Ami Isseroff suggests an answer to his question, why is Israel being so quiet about the alleged strike?

Two major pieces do not fit the puzzle in all these speculations. The first, is why Israel chose to risk US wrath by disturbing the peace before the upcoming November summit, and the second is why Israel is keeping mum about the target. Israel has been unusually silent about this operation, and the US has been quite silent too.

If Syrians are getting Iranian technology, or transferring Iranian technology to the Hizbolla, it is greatly to Israel's advantage to advertise the nature of the target and to provide proof, in order to justify the incursions. This time however, there were no aerial reconnaisance photos and no press conferences, despite the supposed need of the IDF to regain prestige after its mediocre performance in the Lebanon war. Likewise the Syrians are keeping mum about the target.

A probable explanation that fis the missing pieces into the puzzle lies in a somewhat different direction. The Russians are developing naval bases in Tartus and Latakia. To support and defend these bases, the Russians may have been installing versions of the Pantsyr-1 (SA-22 or SA-19) missile system. Syria has also reportedly purchased the Pantsyr system and is rumored to be transferring it to Iran. Or possibly, the Russians may have installed and manned a listening post, similar to the one that did so much damage in the recent Lebanon war. The proximity to the Turkish border tends to support the idea that the target may have had something to do with the Russian naval bases.

The Pantsyr has mobile and stationary versions, and can cover a radius of at least 20 KM. In a war, it could be moved to provide an air umbrella for Syrian incursions into Israel. If not the Pantsyr, then perhaps a more advanced system was installed, one that the Russians would not allow the Syrians to touch.

If Russian technicians or military personnel were at risk in the strike, then for obvious reasons Israel would have no interest in advertising the nature of the target, the Russians would have no interest in admitting their presence, and the United States would be quite happy with the result. If not Russians, then the target had to be some other nationality that is not supposed to be in the Middle East, and which Israel would be reluctant to reveal.

I do not have any inside knowledge, and do not offer this theory as more than conjectural speculation. But when you have eliminated all other explanations, what remains, however improbable, must be the solution.

Iranian Intelligence Minister meets with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and his Saudi counterpart. Iranian-born, Israeli based Middle East analyst and writer Meir Javedanfar permits me to post this news/comment he circulated to a private list:

Gholam Hussein Ejehi, Iran's Minister of Intelligence met with both King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Moghren Ben Aabol Aziz, his counterpart, during a recent visit to the red sea port of Jeddah.

This is a very interesting development. First and and foremost because Ejehi was met by the King himself. Ejehi was in Saudi Arabia on his own. He wasn't accompanied by the Foreign Minister Mottaki, Ali Larijani, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This goes to show how much emphasis and importance the Saudis attach to his position. This has most probably come about after Iran's intelligence related achievements in Iraq.

Although the contents of their talks not been revealed by either side, the Iranian news agency Baztab speculates that this meeting was used by Tehran to complain about anti Shiite preachings which have been coming out of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi religious institutions. According to Baztab, Iran is worried that its pilgrims may become victims of such preachings during their visit to the city of Mecca.

What was not mentioned in Baztab's report, and I wonder if it was discussed, was the recent controversial decision by the Saudis to finger print and photograph every single Iranian pilgrim entering the country. This has raised the fury of the Iranian press who accuse the Saudis of victimizing Iranian pilgrims, again.

I also wonder if the meeting was used to enable Iran and Saudi Arabia to work out a deal to over Iraq. Reduction in violence would serve both sides. It would enable the Saudis to use the opportunity to work out some kind of a deal for the Sunni politicians in the Iraqi government. Furthermore, as Sunnis also suffer from sectarian violence, a lull would enable Iraq's Sunnis to rebuild, and perhaps rearm, should the situation deteriorate again.

A fall in level of violence would also suit Iran. The current mayhem in Iraq has allowed PEJAK to use the vacuum to attack Iran's territory and its armed forces; a threat which Iran takes seriously. So serious that it has resorted to bombarding PEJAK positions inside Iraqi territory.

Not sure what the implications of the meeting are for the reported administration strategy of working with the Sunni Gulf States to counter Iran.

If Debat misrepresents and makes up interviews and university degrees, is ABC going to investigate his stories, including the one that the CIA was funding the Baluchis to attack the Tehran regime? Is this recent piece which fueled so much Iran war hysteria for which he was apparently the main source phony too? What's real and what's not? Highly disturbing. I personally tried to probe Debat by email about the Baluchi piece because it conflicted with so much other evidence and reporting and was a subject of great interest to me, after he offered on a Gulf oriented list we're on to answer questions about the piece, but did not get very far, as I remember, he mentioned it was sourced to Pakistani intelligence types. But it was a piece that stood out for me as a red flag. I expressed some skepticism about ABC's spin on a related piece here and here. My understanding is that ABC has severed ties with him since but it does not appear to have acted to investigate or retract the stories. (Read the Pascal Riche piece all the way through, it is truly shocking what he seemingly got away with, a Talented Mr. Ripley story that the American and British and French media have fallen for again and again.)

Update: Alexis Debat sent this rebuttal to the Riche piece:

To Whom It May Concern,

Pascal Riché’s article in “Rue 89” raises very serious questions about my integrity and my credentials, and puts my entire professional life in jeopardy. This is my point by point response below:

1. The interview with Senator Barack Obama did happen through a third party. A journalist named Rob Sherman approached me last spring with an offer to conduct the interview on my behalf. I wrote up the questions and got the answers in writing. My only mistake was to sign this interview in my name, following Rob’s request. I did not conduct this interview in person with the senator, but it did take place. I recognize that putting my name on it was a mistake, for which I take full responsibility.

2. Pascal Riché claims that “I have a reputation for making up stories”. This is a slanderous assertion supported by no facts. In my 5 and a half years at ABC News, I have not once “made up stories” or been suspected of coming forward with false or even weak information. In fact, I have broken many terrorism-related stories over the years. Anybody can check this directly with ABC. If I was such a “fabulist”, as Mr. Riché claims, I would not have survived a single day in such an environment.

3. Mr. Riché claims that I asserted to have a diploma from a fake and fraudulent institution called Edenvale University. I have never made such an assertion, nor claimed to hold a “diploma” from that university. None of the biographies accessible online mention this. I am fully aware that Edenvale University is a false institution. Again, this is a slanderous assertion not supported by any facts.

4. I did work for the Institut Montaigne under Bruno Ehrard-Steiner in 2001-2002, in the very beginning of the organization. I helped Bruno lay out a plan for establishing strategic relations with think-tanks in the United States. This can be checked directly with Mr. Ehrard-Steiner (who is now a spokesperson for Merck France) at bruno_erhard@merck.com .

5. On the subject of the legitimacy of my PhD, the article once again mentions inaccurate and incomplete information. I was indeed recently made aware of an administrative problem with regard to the completion of my PhD, which I am in the process of sorting out through legal means. My thesis was completed in 1999, and is registered at the Sorbonne, as indicated in this website: http://edoc-histoire.univ-paris1.fr/EDvieux/html/doctot.htm. Never did I forge any document or diploma. Mr. Kaspi, who is quoted in the piece, was not my thesis director.

6. I did work for the “Fondation Agir Contre l’Exclusion” as a volunteer in the “preadolescent” program in 1994, doing work on social integration in poor neighborhoods around Paris. This again can be easily checked by contacting any of the fondation’s officials listed here: http://www.fondationface.org/faceframe/frame_contact.htm.

7. The article then proceeds to mention slanderous and inaccurate rumors about my assertions regarding my time in the French military, without mentioning sources or facts. This again appears nowhere in my biographies or CVs, and is pure hearsay and slander.

I take full responsibility for my actions and my credentials. I did make a serious mistake in handling the interview with Senator Barack Obama. But this article is an attempt to discredit and destroy me personally in a slanderous and completely inaccurate way.

I have already taken steps to bring legal action against Mr. Riché and “Rue89”.

In addition, he writes, " ... The Jundullah story came from two very reliable sources, and was confirmed by others at ABC from US sources. ABC only published one-third of what I reported (I had many names, locations, etc.). ABC is currently taking all of my reporting apart, and has not found any reason to doubt it. It will not. I stand completely by 100% of the information I provided ABC."

More here.

Update II: ABC's Senior Vice President Jeffrey Schneider writes, "Above is a link to our blotter story about Debat. In your post re CIA/ Baluchis you write that we reported that the CIA was funding Baluchi. Actually, we were quite careful with our language and did NOT report that. We reported that they were being 'encouraged and advised' - we specifically did not report that they were being funded by the CIA. We have reviewed that story (and all the other stories he worked on) and we had multiple US and European government sources that informed our reporting. As you will see from the blotter story above, we acted expeditiously to sever ties with Debat when we could not establish his credentials and we did immediately investigate his work."

For his part, at the time the relevant story was released, Debat claimed on a list that "I reported this story from Pakistan. The money goes through half a dozen Iranian exiles in Europe and the UAE. I would be more than happy to respond to questions from other members."

When I asked him, "So the US government is directing money through exiles to Reggi? ...," he at first responded that he couldn't answer questions after all; when I protested that he had just offered to do so in the comment above, he said, "It's a CIA op for which the money goes through various exiles in Europe."

When I asked, "But a CIA op whose purpose is to destabilize Iran? Or to gather intel on AQ in Iran? It would be an important distinction ... " Debat responded, "I believe destabilize, but my sources are not from the US intel community, so I don't know what their intent is."

ABC's problem now to sort out.

More here.

Update III: Riche says they confirmed another fake interview with Alan Greenspan (scroll to bottom, Update 12/9).

Rumsfeld speaks with GQ's Lisa DePaulo. And says he doesn't miss Bush.

WSJ: "The Pentagon is preparing to build its first base for U.S. forces near the Iraqi-Iranian border, in a major new effort to curb the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq. The push also includes construction of fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad and the installation of X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the only formal border crossing between Iran and Iraq. The measures come as the U.S. high command in Iraq has begun to recalibrate the overall American mission in the country to focus less on the Sunni Muslim radicals who were long the primary U.S. targets of pacifying the country and more on the Shiite Muslim militias suspected of maintaining close ties to Iran." Via Spencer Ackerman.

Fantasy Island. A knowledgeable Iraq observer offers this analysis to post, upon the occasion of the Petraeus and Crocker testimony today, which asks this question: If U.S. forces are defeating everybody, why are deaths still so high?

Among proponents of the surge, there is a lot of "fantasy Island" stuff coming out regarding the Sunni “awakening” and its relationship to the surge. Recognizing the precise contours of the fantasy requires us to take a closer look at the causal dynamics of the awakening, including the motivation of Sunni actors, the timing of their behavioral changes, and the importance of the surge.

MOTIVATION

Surge cheerleaders admit that the major motivation driving the Sunni sheiks and the "former" insurgents to forge cooperative relationships with U.S. forces is enemy-of-my-enemy logic, but they typically ignore the implications this has for evaluating the surge. Nearly everyone agrees that the sheiks and insurgents are responding to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) missteps (such as seizing wives from tribal families), atrocities against Sunnis, and economic and power grabs (especially since AQI declared the creation of the "Islamic State in Iraq" in Sunni areas last year) (see: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/anatomy-of-a-tribal-revolt/). Sunni groups are cooperating with us to defeat their proximate enemy (AQI) while preparing to defend themselves against the Shia and the Iranians after our inevitable departure. In other words, the surge is irrelevant to the motivation behind the awakening.

TIMING

Both the Anbar Salvation Council (tribes against AQI) and the Reform and Jihad Front (insurgents against AQI) were created before the surge and, as I noted above, were motivated by non-surge-related considerations. It is true that the tempo of cooperation has picked up since January, but equating this correlation with the surge does not mean causation (as we shall see in a moment).

CAUSAL IMPORTANCE OF EXTRA TROOPS (THE SURGE)

One hypothesis advanced by surge advocates is that extra U.S. troops solidified tribal cooperation in Anbar because American forces could protect the sheiks against AQI reprisals. This is true, but is this dynamic surge related? The first instance of this protection arrangemet was when Colonel Sean McFarland made the decision to do this in Ramadi – in the summer of 2006. In general, the key has been the decision on the part of Army and Marine commanders to follow through on tribal engagement and protection (that is, a change in tactics and strategy) not extra troops per se. Plus, does the pro-surge crowd really think that, in Anbar, a gradual increase in 4,000 troops (on top of the 20-30k that were already there) was decisive in being able to protect the sheiks? There is no evidence for that. The better evidence is that U.S. troops helped facilitate, encourage, train and equip tribal militias (uh, I mean, "auxiliary police" and "provincial security forces") that could provide protection against AQI. Were the 4,000 extra troops in Anbar key to this? Again, there is no evidence or reason that they were. The key was a change in American actions that capitalized on intra-Sunni dynamics not more troops per se.

What about the former insurgents that are now cooperating with U.S. forces in Anbar, Diyala, Salah ad Din, etc.? Did they need American protection to flip? I doubt it. Let's keep in mind, AQI is a vicious terrorist organization, but they are maybe 5% of the insurgency and are responsible for 10-15% of insurgent attacks (see: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0710.tilghman.html). So, for surgenistas to be right that the "former" insurgents that are now cooperating to go after AQI needed our protection, we would have to conclude that the other 95% of the insurgency (you know, the guys who have bogged down the most powerful army in the history of the world for four years) need the U.S. to protect them against the small minority of fanatics and foreigners that make up AQI. Does that seem likely? No. They are using U.S. forces and capitalizing on the fact that they are helping militants go after their enemies -- and the fact that Americans are not targeting them in the interim. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that much of the "cooperation" is not cooperation at all -- the former insurgents simply ask U.S. forces to get out of the way so they can clean out their areas of AQI.

A second pro-surge hypothesis is that the extra troops allowed a much higher tempo of operations to drive AQI out of safe havens throughout Iraq (Anbar, the Baghdad belts, north Babil, Diyala) and prevent them from setting up shop elsewhere. I think there is a lot of merit to this, but even here we need to be more careful about overplaying the importance of the surged troop levels as opposed to other factors. First, keep in mind that AQI is small. The key to defeating them is intelligence. U.S. forces get this intelligence from their relationships with Sunni tribes and "former" insurgents so they can more efficiently target AQI. If, as I argue, these relationships are not caused by the surge, then neither is the actionable intelligence. The extra troops certainly allow American troops to exploit this intelligence in more places simultaneously by protecting informants and conducting raids, which is speeding up the degradation of AQI, but by how much is unclear. In other words, with 130,000 troops (pre-surge), Iraqi Army help, and assistance from tribal militia and former insurgents, could U.S. forces have still accomplished much the same thing? Maybe. The surge helped, but the marginal benefits are hard to judge. Again, the key was the change in tactics and strategy facilitated by American cooperation with Sunnis, not higher troop numbers in-and-of-themselves. Second, we should not exaggerate U.S. gains. In many cases, AQI left towns before U.S. forces showed up (exhibit A is Baquba--the "Fallujah of 2007" and an AQI stronghold--where U.S. troops did not get the fight they expected). Is AQI gone for good? We'll see, but I'm not as optimistic as surge advocates are here.

DEFEATING THE SUNNI INSURGENCY?

Some surge fans come close to asserting that the Sunni insurgency is in its “last throes,” but there is little evidence that the U.S. has defeated the insurgency. Some of the insurgents are cooperating with coalition forces, but this is likely to be temporary since they are ultimately highly motivated to have American troops leave and are not highly motivated to reach an accommodation with the Shia government (and their perceived Persian patrons). Once U.S. forces are not useful, former insurgents will demand they depart or start attacking them again—that is, unless the Bush administration successfully exploits the current moment to lock in a new arrangement (see below).

Moreover, some insurgents are clearly still fighting, even in Anbar, and not all of these are AQI. (Which speaks to another issue in the worldview fleshed out by surge proponents: if AQI and the insurgents are basically done for, and we are making huge strides against sectarian violence too, who is doing all the killing? The total number of civilian deaths is down, but not significantly and only in comparison to their heights in mid-2006. There are still a significant number of Iraqis dying: (see http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/baghdad-surge/). If U.S. forces are defeating everybody, why are deaths still so high?)

MAINTAINING MOMENTUM: STAY THE COURSE?

The surge has mattered to the momentum on the ground, but its causal importance has been exaggerated by surge groupies. Furthermore, this momentum is fragile, but not for the reasons surge advocates think. It is fragile because there is a split between the Sunni sheiks and the former insurgents now helping us. All are purely self-interested parties, but the former is more pro-U.S. and dependent upon the American military. The latter represent the most virulently anti-occupation forces in Iraq. Their marriage of convenience with American forces is temporary and will not be furthered by staying at surged levels. Instead, if the U.S. doesn’t start to negotiate its departure, this relationship will likely end and end bloody.

Instead, as this excellent commentary from Marc Lynch (http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2007/09/ams-open-letter.html) suggests, the U.S. should exploit its temporary position of strength from the surge and use it to negotiate an American withdrawal to take advantage of the motivations and dynamics within the Sunni community. The goal would be to trade drawdowns from some areas (principally Sunni areas) in exchange for certain concessions from Sunni groups that would make them less threatening to the Shia/central government. At the same time, these negotiations would aim to include Shia groups (especially the Sadrists) that oppose the occupation, seeking to trade timetables, etc. for concessions from them that would make Sunnis more secure.

As Iraq moves toward a highly decentralized state, these negotiations could use the large U.S. troop presence as a means to stitch together a grand bargain with the warring parties (Dayton style) that would establish a framework and a rough balance of power that might be sustainable after U.S. forces leave. However, this will only be viable in the context of a professional and non- sectarian Iraqi Army to police the seams. Fortunately, as the General Jones report suggested, the capabilities of the Iraqi Army are such that the U.S. may be able to draw down gradually over the next 12-18 months, moving to a support and “overwatch” role, and not lose the gains from the past year.

In short, if the administration, working with Democrats in Congress, crafts a careful and responsible new strategy, it may be able to seize on the modest momentum of the present to move the United States forward and out of Iraq -- but that strategy would not embrace an open-ended commitment to the surge.

Traveling, light posting for a couple days.

USA Today:

Opponents of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have assumed leadership of two of Iran's top institutions, a shakeup that reflects Western economic pressure on Iran and could lead to a less confrontational foreign policy, particularly on the nuclear issue.

On Tuesday, Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic former president who lost to Ahmadinejad in 2005 presidential elections, was elected head of the Assembly of Experts. Under Iran's political system, the 86-member body of Shiite Muslim clerics appoints Iran's supreme leader — a religious figure who outranks the president.

On Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei replaced the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military organization in the country.

Taken together, the steps are a setback for Ahmadinejad, said William Samii, an Iran analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a think tank for the U.S. Navy.

"The supreme leader has taken actions to sideline Ahmadinejad and the people associated with him," Samii said. "People are fed up with Ahmadinejad and his belligerence. The regime will try to pursue a less confrontational foreign policy."

Here's the whole piece.

Hot off the presses, the new GAO Iraq report declaring that the Iraqi government "has not met most legislative, security and economic benchmarks" (large .pdf).

BBC: Iranian American journalist Parnaz Azima free to travel.

Goldsmith. Conservative former top Bush Justice Department appointee says White House "unnecessary unilateralism" and "go it alone" approach to executive power and war on terror has backfired:

In Goldsmith’s view, the Bush administration went about answering these questions in the wrong way. Instead of reaching out to Congress and the courts for support, which would have strengthened its legal hand, the administration asserted what Goldsmith considers an unnecessarily broad, “go-it-alone” view of executive power. As Goldsmith sees it, this strategy has backfired. “They embraced this vision,” he says, “because they wanted to leave the presidency stronger than when they assumed office, but the approach they took achieved exactly the opposite effect. The central irony is that people whose explicit goal was to expand presidential power have diminished it.” ...

In Goldsmith's view, an indifference to the political process has ultimately made Bush a less effective wartime leader than his greatest predecessors. Surprisingly, Bush, who is not a lawyer, allowed far more legalistic positions in the war on terror to be adopted in his name, without bothering to try to persuade Congress and the public that his positions were correct. "I don't know if President Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making," Goldsmith told me. "It's hard to know how he would know."

And this:

Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the [warrantless domestic surveillance] problem, which was highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts. “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.

In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they handled other laws they objected to: “They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations,” he writes. Goldsmith’s first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or “strict compartmentalization,” in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.’s inspector general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel’s legal analysis supporting the secret surveillance program. “Before I arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were allowed to see the Justice Department’s legal analysis of what N.S.A. was doing,” Goldsmith writes.

Goldsmith also witnessed perhaps the most well-known confrontation over the administration’s aggressive tactics: the scene at Ashcroft’s hospital bed on March 10, 2004, when Gonzales and Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, visited the hospital to demand that the ailing Ashcroft approve, over Goldsmith and Comey’s objections, a secret program that was about to expire. ...

Suddenly, Gonzales and Card came in the room and announced that they were there in connection with the classified program. “Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his chest,” Goldsmith recalls. “All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he said that he didn’t appreciate them coming to visit him under those circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter they were asking about and that, in any event, he wasn’t the attorney general at the moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave a two-minute speech, and I was sure at the end of it he was going to die. It was the most amazing scene I’ve ever witnessed.”

After a bit of silence, Goldsmith told me, Gonzales thanked Ashcroft, and he and Card walked out of the room. “At that moment,” Goldsmith recalled, “Mrs. Ashcroft, who obviously couldn’t believe what she saw happening to her sick husband, looked at Gonzales and Card as they walked out of the room and stuck her tongue out at them. She had no idea what we were discussing, but this sweet-looking woman sticking out her tongue was the ultimate expression of disapproval. It captured the feeling in the room perfectly.”

Check out the scene with him discussing the NSA surveillance program with FBI agents walking around Harvard Square too. After that, Goldsmith decided he could discuss the legal problems with the surveillance program in the book. Presumably lots of fodder here for upcoming Congressional hearings.

Update: Marty Lederman has an important caveat about Yoo's torture memos that Goldsmith withdrew, among many OLC opinions.

WP: Bush, Advisors visit Anbar.

AP/ NYT: Haleh Esfandiari reunited with her family in Austria. Another Iranian American arrested in May, Kian Tajbakhsh, remains held.

"Petraeus cuddles abandoned Iraqi lambs!" Guest post from a friend:

I'm sorry, but Operation Petraeus Propaganda - reaches unexcelled heights with this article. It's like a press release. Coming tomorrow in the hard-hitting WaPo series leading up to the Petraeus briefing: "Petraeus cuddles abandoned Iraqi lambs!" The lede: "General David Petraeus, the man single-handedly responsible for turning the Iraq War around, likes to tell his troops about the importance of the "propaganda of the deed" in counterinsurgency operations. Always practicing what he preaches, over the last eight months, Petraeus has repeatedly put himself in mortal danger by descending on a town recently cleared and meeting locals without body armor or the other trappings of the elite commander. But Petraeus astonished even his own brain trust - composed of Rhodes scholar-warriors to a person - on Sunday when he publicly cuddled and fed a pair of baby lambs whose mother had been slaughtered in front of their eyes by al Qaeda only hours before. [New paragraph] Local residents were taken aback and immediately declared their devotion to the cause of bottom-up national reconciliation. "Before I thought of the Americans as my enemy," said Ralph al-Peters, a resident of X, the town where the Petraeus cuddled the cuties. "But now I realize that the American Congress must not abandon us to the lamb-slaughterers. I hope they see that the enemy of our lambs is our enemy and that al Qaeda must be defeated so there is not another 9-11 nuclear holocaust made by the Iranians."

More revelations via the WP on the forthcoming authorized biography of the Bush White House, where "the management structure had collapsed."

Draper offers little additional insight or details of Cheney's large influence in administration policy. But he writes that, despite his air of unflappability, the vice president did find himself ruminating over mistakes made, chief among them installing L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority to run Iraq for a year after the invasion. Instead, Draper suggests, Cheney believes that the White House should have set up a provisional government right away, as Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress recommended from the beginning.

Several of Bush's top advisers believe that the president's view of postwar Iraq was significantly affected by his meeting with three Iraqi exiles in the Oval Office several months before the 2003 invasion, Draper reports.

He writes that all three exiles, Kanan Makiya, Hatem Mukhlis and Rend Franke, agreed without qualification that "Iraq would greet American forces with enthusiasm. Ethnic and religious tensions would dissolve with the collapse of Saddam's regime. And democracy would spring forth with little effort -- particularly in light of Bush's commitment to rebuild the country."

At least two of the three Iraqis now live in the United States.

For the lawyers who specialize in this kind of thing out there, I'm interested in your read of this. So Tommy Kontogiannis becomes involved in the late 1990s in only his latest scheme, as an ATM to a bunch of on-paper businesses in North Carolina. What's it about? New vehicles for money laundering? Get rich quick scheme gone flop? He was already at this point apparently under investigation in New York for being part of a massive Queens local school board corruption scheme. So are his North Carolina activities just a random opportunity that fell in his lap? A vehicle to launder money he's getting illegally elsewhere - or for others? And when does Nifong get on the scene? There seems to be a pattern of Kontogiannis engaging in criminal activity and then offering rather successfully to inform on it to get a deal. But in the North Carolina case, which came first? And can he simply engage in unlimited criminal activity if he throws a few tidbits to his law enforcement handlers now and then? And do the Feds and law enforcement also have an interest in portraying Kontogiannis as a more valuable informant than he actually is? And did his apparent relationship with law enforcement preceed his conspiring with Congressman Cunningham et al in the defrauding of the U.S.? That would be a rather embarrassing detail, wouldn't it? After all, no sign that any FBI investigation of Cunningham began until after the San Diego Union Trib stories on him, beginning in 2005. So Kontogiannis has a deal with presumably the FBI that allows him to commit plunder against the U.S. time and again while throwing them information? And then pretty much get off for a fine - for at least the second and possibly the third or fourth time?

Chicago Trib: "In the House, Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas) was forced to resign while under investigation for his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) pleaded guilty to a felony and is serving a 30-month sentence for his dealings with Abramoff. Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) recently said he would not run for reelection, privately telling his staff he expects to be indicted for his ties to Abramoff."