Condeleezza Rice:Post 2001

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2002-2003: US Government Works on Plans for Post-War Iraq
The Bush administration develops plans for post-war Iraq. But the process is plagued with infighting between a small, highly secretive group of planners in the Pentagon and experts at the CIA and State Department who are involved with the “Future of Iraq Project” (see April 2002-March 2003). The two opposing groups disagree on a wide range of topics, but it is the Pentagon group which exerts the strongest influence on the White House’s plans (see Fall 2002) for administering post-Saddam Iraq. One State Department official complains to The Washington Post in October 2002 “that the Pentagon is seeking to dominate every aspect of Iraq’s postwar reconstruction.” The group of Pentagon planners includes several noted neoconservatives who work in, or in association with, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (see September 2002) and the Near East/South Asia bureau. The planners have close ties to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), two think tanks with a shared vision of reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in favor of US and Israeli interests. The Pentagon planning group “had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with US friends and allies,” Knight Ridder Newspapers will later observe. The group’s objectives put it at odds with planners at the CIA and State Department whose approach and objectives are much more prudent. The Pentagon unit works independently of the CIA and State Department and pays little attention to the work of those two agencies. Critics complain that the group is working in virtual secrecy and evading the scrutiny and oversight of others involved in the post-war planning process by confining their inter-agency communications to discussions with their neoconservative colleagues working in other parts of the government. The Pentagon planners even have a direct line to the office of Dick Cheney where their fellow neoconservative, Lewis Libby, is working. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 11/12/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 4/2/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 7/12/2003] In the fall of 2002, the various groups involved in planning for post-war Iraq send their recommendations to the White House’s Executive Steering Committee, which reviews their work and then passes on its own recommendations to the cabinet heads (see Fall 2002). According to a July 2003 report by Knight Ridder Newspapers, the ultimate responsibility for deciding the administration’s post-war transition plans lay with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. [KNIGHT RIDDER, 7/12/2003] The Office of Special Plans - The civilian planners at the Pentagon believe that the UN should exert no influence over the structure, make-up, or policy of the interim Iraqi post-Saddam government. They seek to limit the UN’s role to humanitarian and reconstruction projects, and possibly security. The State Department, however, believes that the US will not be able to do it alone and that UN participation in post-Saddam Iraq will be essential. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/2/2003; OBSERVER, 4/6/2003] The Pentagon group wants to install Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), as leader of post-Saddam Iraq. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 5/1/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 7/12/2003 SOURCES: RICHARD PERLE] The group thinks that the Iraqis will welcome Chalabi, who claims he has a secret network inside and outside the Ba’ath government which will quickly fill in the power vacuum to restore order to the country. Chalabi is a notorious figure who is considered untrustworthy by the State Department and CIA and who has a history of financial misdealings. [KNIGHT RIDDER, 7/12/2003] But the Pentagon is said to be enamored with Chalabi “because he [advocates] normal diplomatic relations with Israel” which they believe will “‘[take] off the board’ one of the only remaining major Arab threats to Israeli security.” Another geopolitical benefit to installing Chalabi is that he can help the US contain “the influence of Iran’s radical Islamic leaders in the region, because he would… [provide] bases in Iraq for US troops,” which would “complete Iran’s encirclement by American military forces around the Persian Gulf and US friends in Russia and Central Asia.” [KNIGHT RIDDER, 7/12/2003 SOURCES: UNNAMED BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL] Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, with close ties to the Pentagon’s planning group, tells Robert Dreyfuss of American Prospect Magazine that the State Department’s perception of Chalabi is wrong. “The [Defense Department] is running post-Saddam Iraq,” said Pletka, almost shouting. “The people at the State Department don’t know what they are talking about! Who the hell are they?… the simple fact is, the president is comfortable with people who are comfortable with the INC.” [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 5/1/2003] The Pentagon’s planning unit believes that the Iraqis will welcome US troops as liberators and that any militant resistance will be short-lived. They do not develop a contingency plan for persistent civil unrest. [KNIGHT RIDDER, 7/12/2003] However the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” planning project is more prudent, noting that Iraqis will likely be weary of US designs on their country. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/19/2003] The Pentagon planners believe that Iraq’s oil reserves—estimated to contain some 112 billion barrels of oil—should be used to help fund the reconstruction of Iraq. They also advocate a plan that would give the US more control over Iraq’s oil. “[The Pentagon] hawks have long argued that US control of Iraq’s oil would help deliver a second objective,” reports the Observer. “That is the destruction of OPEC, the oil producers’ cartel, which they argue is ‘evil’—that is, incompatible with American interests.” The State Department, however, believes such aggressive policies will surely infuriate Iraqis and give credence to suspicions that the invasion is motivated by oil interests. One critic of the plan says “that only a puppet Iraqi government would acquiesce to US supervision of the oil fields and that one so slavish to US interests risks becoming untenable with Iraqis.” [OBSERVER, 11/3/2002; INSIGHT, 12/28/2002] Entity Tags: Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Donald Rumsfeld, Ahmed Chalabi, Danielle Pletka, Office of Special Plans, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 2002: Cheney Convinces Bush to ‘Correct Error’ of 1991 Gulf War, Overthrow Hussein Vice President Dick Cheney makes an unusually personal plea to President Bush to redirect the US war on terror to focus on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Several of Bush’s senior aides have argued the point before, but until now the US strategy has been to root out al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Cheney argues that in 1991 he was part of the team that created what he now believes to be a flawed policy—leaving Hussein in power after the Gulf War—and now Bush can correct that error (see February 1991-1992). Cheney’s argument is very successful. “The reason that Cheney was able to sell Bush the policy is that he was able to say, ‘I’ve changed,’” a senior administration official will say. “‘I used to have the same position as [James] Baker, [Brent] Scowcroft, and your father—and here’s why it’s wrong.’” By late February or early March of 2002, Bush has swung to the position Cheney advocates, so much so that he interrupts a meeting between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and three senators to boast: “F_ck Saddam. We’re taking him out” (see (March 2002)). [NEW REPUBLIC, 11/20/2003] According to his 2008 book What Happened, deputy press secretary Scott McClellan isn’t sure why Cheney is so determined to invade Iraq. McClellan will state flatly that “some, like Cheney, [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, and [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz were evidently pursuing their own agendas,” and will note that “[t]he most significant of their personal agendas was probably Cheney’s, given his closeness to the president and his influence over him.” Because of “Cheney’s personality and his penchant for secrecy,” McClellan believes his agenda “is the most likely to remain unknown.” Whether Cheney was driven to “finish the job he started as defense secretary in 1991,” when the US invaded Iraq but did not topple the Hussein regime (see January 16, 1991 and After), or whether he sought to “give America more influence over Iraq’s oil reserves,” McClellan is unsure. McClellan will write that Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s top foreign policy adviser, should have stood up to the “forceful personalities” of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, “rather than deferring to them.” But, he will write, “my later experiences with Condi led me to believe that she was more interested in figuring out where the president stood and just carrying out his wishes while expending only cursory effort on helping him understand all the considerations and potential consequences” of an invasion. Bush, McClellan will observe, is “intellectually incurious” and prone to make decisions based on instinct rather than “deep intellectual debate.” McClellan believes that Bush’s mistakes “could have been prevented had his beliefs been properly vetted and challenged by his top advisers. Bush’s top advisers, especially those on his national security team, allowed the president to be put in the position he is in today. His credibility has been shattered and his public standing seemingly irreparably damaged.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 145-146] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Scott McClellan, Saddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 18-25, 2002: President Bush Ignores Advice from Senior Cabinet and Military Officials, Decides Geneva Conventions Do Not Apply to Taliban Siding with the Pentagon and Justice Department against the State Department, President Bush declares the Geneva Conventions invalid with regard to conflicts with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Secretary of State Colin Powell urges Bush to reconsider, saying that while Geneva does not apply to al-Qaeda terrorists, making such a decision for the Taliban—the putative government of Afghanistan—is a different matter. Such a decision could put US troops at risk. Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs chairman General Richard B. Myers support Powell’s position. Yet another voice carries more weight with Bush: John Yoo, a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC—see October 23, 2001). Yoo says that Afghanistan is a “failed state” without a functional government, and Taliban fighters are not members of an army as such, but members of a “militant, terrorist-like group” (see January 9, 2002). White House counsel Alberto Gonzales agrees with Yoo in a January 25 memo, calling Yoo’s opinion “definitive.” The Gonzales memo concludes that the “new kind of war” Bush wants to fight should not be equated with Geneva’s “quaint” privileges granted to prisoners of war, or the “strict limitations” they impose on interrogations (see January 25, 2002). Military lawyers dispute the idea that Geneva limits interrogations to recitals of name, rank, and serial number, but their objections are ignored. For an OLC lawyer to override the judgment of senior Cabinet officials is unprecedented. OLC lawyers usually render opinions on questions that have already been deliberated by the legal staffs of the agencies involved. But, perhaps because OLC lawyers like Yoo give Bush the legal opinions he wants, Bush grants that agency the first and last say in matters such as these. “OLC was definitely running the show legally, and John Yoo in particular,” a former Pentagon lawyer will recall. “Even though he was quite young, he exercised disproportionate authority because of his personality and his strong opinions.” Yoo is also very close to senior officials in the office of the vice president and in the Pentagon’s legal office. [LEDGER (LAKELAND FL), 10/24/2004] Undermining, Cutting out Top Advisers - Cheney deliberately cuts out the president’s national security counsel, John Bellinger, because, as the Washington Post will later report, Cheney’s top adviser, David Addington, holds Bellinger in “open contempt” and does not trust him to adequately push for expanded presidential authority (see January 18-25, 2002). Cheney and his office will also move to exclude Secretary of State Colin Powell from the decision-making process, and, when the media learns of the decision, will manage to shift some of the blame onto Powell (see January 25, 2002). [WASHINGTON POST, 6/24/2007] Final Decision - Bush will make his formal final declaration three weeks later (see February 7, 2002). Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, US Department of Justice, Richard B. Myers, US Department of State, Taliban, Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, Alberto R. Gonzales, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Colin Powell, Al-Qaeda, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bellinger, George W. Bush, Geneva Conventions, David S. Addington Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties

January 18-25, 2002: White House National Security Counsel Cut out of Decision-Making Process Regarding Abandonment of Geneva Conventions John Bellinger, the White House’s chief national security counsel, sends his supervisor, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, what he thinks is a private memo with a blunt warning about the legality of the proposal to ignore the Geneva Conventions in interrogating terror suspects (see January 18-25, 2002). The proposal, Bellinger writes, will place Bush in direct breach of international law and threaten the most fundamental cooperation from allied governments. Faxes from other governments, even Britain, have been pouring into the State Department warning that they cannot turn over suspects to the US if the Bush administration withdraws from accepted legal norms. The Bellinger memo quickly finds its way into Vice President Cheney’s office, to Bellinger’s chagrin; Cheney is reportedly “concerned” about Belliger’s advice. Bellinger does not know until now that any documents prepared for Rice are always “routed outside the formal process” to Cheney. The reverse does not apply. Bellinger is unaware of just how systematically he is being cut out of the decision-making process. [LEDGER (LAKELAND FL), 10/24/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 6/24/2007] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, John Bellinger, US Department of State, Geneva Conventions, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties

February 2002: Powell’s Proposal to Secure All of Afghanistan Is Rejected by Rumsfeld Secretary of State Colin Powell argues in a White House meeting that US troops should join the small international peacekeeping force patrolling Kabul, Afghanistan, and help Hamid Karzai extend his influence beyond just the capital of Kabul. The State Department has held initial talks with European officials indicating that a force of 20,000 to 40,000 peacekeepers could be created, half from Europe and half from the US. But Defense Secretary Rumsfeld asserts that the Europeans would be unwilling to send more troops. He argues that sending more troops could provoke Afghan resistance and divert US forces from hunting terrorists. National Security Adviser Rice fails to take sides, causing Powell’s proposal to effectively die. In the end, the US only deploys 8,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2002, but all of them are there to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda, not to assist with peacekeeping or reconstruction. The 4,000 international peacekeepers do not venture beyond Kabul and the rest of the country remains under the de facto control of local warlords. [NEW YORK TIMES, 8/12/2007] Entity Tags: Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Hamid Karzai, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan

Spring 2002 and Beyond: Cabinet-Level Bush Officials Frequently Discuss and Approve Specific ‘Harsh’ Interrogation Techniques In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House Situation Room, the National Security Council “Principals Committee” discusses and approves specific methods of extreme interrogation techniques to be used by CIA agents against high-value terrorism suspects. The US media does not learn of this until six years later (see April 9, 2008). The Principals meetings are chaired by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and attendees include Vice President Cheney, CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Rice’s group not only discusses and approves specific “harsh” methods of interrogation, but approves the use of “combined” interrogation techniques on suspects that prove recalcitrant. The approved techniques include slapping and shoving prisoners, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, or simulated drowning, a technique banned for decades by the US military. Some of the discussions of the interrogation sessions were so detailed that the Principals virtually choreograph the sessions down to the number of times CIA agents could use specific tactics. [ABC NEWS, 4/9/2008] The Principals also ensure that President Bush is not involved in the meetings, therefore granting him “deniability” over the decisions, though Bush will eventually admit to being very aware of the decisions (see April 11, 2008). The Principals, particularly Cheney, are described by a senior intelligence official as “deeply immersed” in the specifics of the decisions, often viewing demonstrations of how specific tactics work. They eventually approve, among other methods, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and physical abuse such as slaps and pushes. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/10/2008] Imminent Threat Calls for Extreme Measures - The move towards using harsh and likely illegal interrogation tactics begins shortly after the capture of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida in late March 2002 (see March 28, 2002). Zubaida is seen as a potentially critical source of information about potential attacks similar to 9/11. Zubaida is kept in a secret CIA prison where he recovers from the wounds suffered during his capture, and where he is repeatedly questioned. However, he is uncooperative with his inquisitors, and CIA officials want to use more physical and aggressive techniques to force him to talk (see March 28, 2002-Mid-2004). The CIA briefs the NSC Principals Committee, chaired by Rice, and the committee signs off on the agency’s plan to use more extreme interrogation methods on Zubaida. He is one of at least three al-Qaeda members to be waterboarded by CIA interrogators (see May 2002-2003). The 'Golden Shield' - The Principals Committee asks the Justice Department to determine whether using such methods would violate domestic or international laws. “No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about,” a second senior intelligence official will recall in 2008. “People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/10/2008] In August 2002, Justice Department lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel write a memo that gives formal legal authority to government interrogators to use harsh, abusive methods on detainees (see August 1, 2002). The memo is called the “Golden Shield” for CIA agents who worry that they could be held criminally liable if the harsh, perhaps tortuous interrogations ever become public. CIA veterans remember how everything from the Vietnam-era “Phoenix Program” of assassinations to the Iran-Contra arms sales of the 1980s were portrayed as actions of a “rogue,” “out-of-control” CIA; this time, they intend to ensure that the White House and not the agency is given ultimate responsibility for authorizing extreme techniques against terror suspects. [ABC NEWS, 4/9/2008] In April 2008, law professor Jonathan Turley will say, “[H]ere you have the CIA, which is basically saying, we’re not going to have a repeat of the 1970s, where you guys have us go exploding cigars and trying to take out leaders and then you say you didn’t know about it. So the CIA has learned a lot. So these meetings certainly cover them in that respect.” [MSNBC, 4/10/2008] Even after the memo is issued, Tenet continues to hold meetings with his fellow Principals to seek confirmation that specific interrogation plans and scenarios are legal, often sparked by cables from agents in the field asking for authorization of particular methodologies, and for guidance in how to handle particular cases (see Summer 2003). Both Tenet and his successor, Porter Goss, will, along with CIA lawyers, regularly brief Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, and other senior White House officials about detainees in CIA custody overseas. One high-ranking official will later recall, “It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time. They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan.’” In every instance, the Principals will approve the requests to use harsher methods. Ashcroft Uneasy at White House Involvement - One of the principals, Attorney General Ashcroft, is troubled by the discussions of harsh interrogation methods that sometimes cross the line into torture. Ashcroft seems perfectly happy with the methods being used, he just isn’t comfortable with senior White House officials being involved in the details of interrogating prisoners. After one meeting, Ashcroft asks, “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.” [ABC NEWS, 4/9/2008] Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Colin Powell, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration, Al-Qaeda, Abu Zubaida, Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Justice, Porter J. Goss, John Ashcroft, Jonathan Turley, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice, Office of Legal Counsel, George W. Bush, Ramzi bin al-Shibh Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties

Spring 2002: Bush Promises Saudi Leader to Work for Peace between Israel and Palestine Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, flies to Texas to meet with President Bush at his ranch in Crawford. Abdullah has been working to convince Arab leaders to accept a proposed peace treaty between Israel and Palestine (see April 2002), but has had no support from the White House. The course of the meeting is later paraphrased by National Security Council staffer Flynt Leverett, the head of the NSC’s Mideast affairs division. As Leverett will recall, the usually deferential Abdullah tells Bush that he has a direct question and wants a direct answer. Abdullah asks Bush: “Are you going to do anything about the Palestinian issue? If you tell me no, if it’s too difficult, if you’re not going to give it that kind of priority, just tell me. I will understand and I will never say anything critical of you or your leadership in public, but I’m going to need to make my own judgments and my own decisions about Saudi interests.” Bush attempts to stall, telling Abdullah he understands his concerns and that he will see what he can do. Abdullah refuses to be mollified. Standing up, he says: “That’s it. This meeting is over.” Bush retreats to another room with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell to discuss Abdullah’s position. Bush returns shortly thereafter and gives Abdullah his word that he will deal seriously with the Palestinian issue. “Okay,” Abdullah says. “The president of the United States has given me his word.” After the meeting, Powell calls Abdullah’s threat “the near-death experience”; Bush, rolling his eyes, says, “We sure don’t want to go through anything like that again.” As Powell later recalls, “It was a very serious moment and no one wanted to see if the Saudis were bluffing.” It is unclear whether Bush is expressing relief or making a sarcastic comment. [ESQUIRE, 10/18/2007] Entity Tags: Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Flynt Leverett, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: US International Relations

(March 2002): Bush: ‘F__k Saddam. We’re Taking Him Out’ During a meeting at the White House attended by Condoleezza Rice and a group of Republican and Democratic senators, President Bush, who is not scheduled to be at the meeting, shows up. At some point, the discussion drifts to Iraq and the president says, “F__k Saddam. We’re taking him out.” The same Time magazine article that reports this also comments, “From the moment he took office, Bush has made noises about finishing the job his father started. Sept. 11 may have diverted his attention, but Iraq has never been far from his mind.” [TIME, 5/5/2002] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

March 8, 2002: CIA Alerts White House, Other Agencies that Wilson Found No Evidence of Iraq Uranium Purchase The CIA sends a one-and-a-half-page cable to the White House, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, with news that a CIA source sent to Niger has failed to find any evidence to back claims that Iraq sought uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The cable contains an initial report of the source’s findings in Niger. [KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/12/2003; ABC NEWS, 6/12/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/13/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 6/13/2003; BBC, 7/8/2003; BBC, 7/8/2003; US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004] The agency rates the quality of the information in the report as “good,” with a rating of 3 out of 5. [COUNTERPUNCH, 11/9/2005] Caveats and Denials - The report does not name the CIA source or indicate that the person is a former ambassador. Instead it describes the source as “a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record” and notes that the Nigeriens with whom he spoke “knew their remarks could reach the US government and may have intended to influence as well as inform.” A later Senate report on the US’s pre-war intelligence on Iraq will state: “The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was prime minister (1997-1999) or foreign minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it.” Mayaki, according to the report, also acknowledged a June 1999 visit (see June 1999) by a businessman who arranged a meeting between Mayaki and an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report says that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss purchasing uranium. The meeting did take place, but according to the report, “Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq.” The intelligence report also says that Niger’s former Minister for Energy and Mines, Mai Manga, told Wilson that there have been no sales outside of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) channels since the mid-1980s. Mai Manga is also reported to have described how the French mining consortium controls Nigerien uranium mining and keeps the uranium very tightly controlled from the time it is mined until the time it is loaded onto ships in Benin for transportation overseas. Manga said he believed it would be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange a special clandestine shipment of uranium to a country like Iraq. [US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004] White House: Report Left Out Details, Considered Unimportant - Bush administration officials will say in June 2003 that the report left out important details, such as the trip’s conclusions. And consequently, the Washington Post will report in June 2003, “It was not considered unusual or very important and not passed on to Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security adviser, or other senior White House officials.” [WASHINGTON POST, 6/12/2003 ; WASHINGTON POST, 6/13/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/13/2003] CIA Source Doubts White House Claims - But the CIA source who made the journey, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, will find this explanation hard to believe. “Though I did not file a written report [he provided an oral briefing (see March 4-5, 2002)], there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission,” he will later explain. “The documents should include the ambassador’s report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/6/2003] Senior CIA Case Officer Backs Up Source - In 2007, Wilson’s wife, senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, will write of the report (see March 4-5, 2002) that if standard protocol has been followed, the report is distributed to “all the government departments that have intelligence components, such as the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, and the overseas military commands. All of us had every reason to believe that their finished report would indeed be sent to the vice president’s office as part of the established protocol.” According to Plame Wilson, who read the report when it was completed (see (March 6, 2002)), much of the report focuses on “Niger’s strict, private, and government controls on mining consortia to ensure that no yellowcake went missing between the uranium mines and the marketplace.” She will write in 2007 that her husband’s report “corroborated and reinforced what was already known.” Both she and her husband assume that the allegations are sufficiently disproven and will not be heard of again. [WILSON, 2007, PP. 112-114] Little New Information - According to intelligence analysts later interviewed by Congressional investigators, the intelligence community does not believe the trip has contributed any significant information to what is already known about the issue, aside from the details of the 1999 Iraqi delegation. [US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ibrahim Mayaki, Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Justice, Mai Manga, Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

March 14, 2002: British Official Tells Rice that Blair Supports Regime Change in Iraq Sir David Manning, the British prime minister’s foreign policy adviser, meets with President George Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. In a summary of the meeting written for Tony Blair, Manning says: “We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a parliament, and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge on your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option.” [UNITED KINGDOM, 3/14/2002 ; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 3/21/2005; GUARDIAN, 4/21/2005; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 6/15/2005] Manning reports that the “big questions” have not been thoroughly considered by the US president. Bush, he notes, “has yet to find the answers… [about] how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified” and how to deal with “what happens on the morning after.” [UNITED KINGDOM, 3/14/2002 ; WASHINGTON POST, 6/12/2005] With regard to the problem of international opinion, Manning says he suggested to Rice that “[r]enewed refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument” in convincing others to support an invasion. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 3/21/2005; GUARDIAN, 4/21/2005; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 6/15/2005] Entity Tags: David Manning, Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

April 2002: Administration Attorneys Discuss Plans to Interrogate Zubaida Attorneys from the CIA’s Office of Legal Counsel meet with a legal adviser from the National Security Council (NSC) and with members of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The meeting concerns the CIA’s proposed interrogation plan for newly captured alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002, March 28-August 1, 2002, and April - June 2002). The lawyers mull over the legal restrictions surrounding the proposed interrogations. CIA records will show that the NSC’s legal counsel will brief National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Counsel to the President Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Michael Chertoff, on the discussion. [SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, 4/22/2009 ] Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, National Security Council, Abu Zubaida, Alberto R. Gonzales, Stephen J. Hadley, Central Intelligence Agency, John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, Condoleezza Rice, Office of Legal Counsel Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline

April 2002 and After: President Bush Deliberately Shielded from Knowledge of Harsh Interrogation Techniques After the capture of al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002), the US government is forced to review procedures on how Zubaida and future detainees should be treated. One CIA source will later say, “Abu Zubaida’s capture triggered everything.” The legal basis for harsh interrogations is murky at best, and the Justice Department will not give any legal guidelines to the CIA until August 2002, after Zubaida has already been tortured (see March 28-August 1, 2002 and August 1, 2002). Bush Kept out of Discussions - New York Times reporter James Risen will later claim in a 2006 book that after showing some initial interest in Zubaida’s treatment (see Late March 2002), President Bush is mysteriously absent from any internal debates about the treatment of detainees. The CIA’s Office of Inspector General later investigates evidence of the CIA’s involvement in detainee abuse, and concludes in a secret report that Bush is never officially briefed on the interrogation tactics used. Earlier meetings are chaired by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and attended by, among others, Vice President Cheney’s chief lawyer David Addington, Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, White House lawyer Timothy Flanigan, and Pentagon chief counsel William J. Haynes. Later, CIA Director George Tenet gives briefings on the tactics to a small group of top officials, including Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and future Attorney General Gonzales, but not Bush. CIA: 'No Presidential Approval' Needed for Torture - Risen will note that “Normally, such high-stakes—and very secret—CIA activities would be carefully vetted by the White House and legally authorized in writing by the president under what are known as presidential findings. Such directives are required by Congress when the CIA engages in covert action.” But through a legal sleight-of-hand, the CIA determines the interrogations should be considered a normal part of “intelligence collection” and not a covert action, so no specific presidential approval is needed. Risen concludes: “Certainly, Cheney and senior White House officials knew that Bush was purposely not being briefed and that the CIA was not being given written presidential authorization for its tactics. It appears that there was a secret agreement among very senior administration officials to insulate Bush and to give him deniability, even as his vice president and senior lieutenants were meeting to discuss the harsh new interrogation methods. President Bush was following a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on the treatment of prisoners.” Later, Flanigan will say of the meetings, “My overwheming impression is that everyone was focused on trying to avoid torture, staying within the line, while doing everything possible to save American lives.” [RISEN, 2006, PP. 23-27; SAVAGE, 2007, PP. 154] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, John C. Yoo, William J. Haynes, Timothy E. Flanigan, John Ashcroft, David S. Addington, George W. Bush, Abu Zubaida, James Risen, Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Alberto R. Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline

April 2002: Rice: Diplomatic Engagement with Iran Useless National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says that it is useless for the US to engage in diplomatic negotiations with Iran. “The problem with Iran,” she says, “is that its policies unfortunately belie the notion that engagement with it has helped.” [SCOBLIC, 2008, PP. 247] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

April 24-25, 2002: Saudi Prince Said to Meet Suspected Hijacker Associate while Visiting Bush; Three Figures in Saudi Crown Prince’s Entourage Are Wanted by FBI

Prince Bandar and President Bush meet at Bush’s ranch in August, 2002. [Source: Associated Press] Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is due to arrive in Houston, Texas, to meet with President Bush at his ranch in nearby Crawford, Texas. Abdullah’s entourage is so large that it fills eight airplanes. As these planes land, US intelligence learns that one person on the flight manifests is wanted by US law enforcement, and two more are on a terrorist watch list. An informed source will later claim that the FBI is ready to “storm the plane and pull those guys off.” However, the State Department fears an international incident. An interagency conflict erupts over what to do. The Wall Street Journal will report in 2003, “Details about what happened to the three men in the end are not entirely clear, and no one at [the State Department] was willing to provide any facts about the incident. What is clear, though, is that the three didn’t get anywhere near Crawford, but were also spared the ‘embarrassment’ of arrest. And the House of Saud was spared an ‘international incident.’” [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/13/2003] The next day, Osama Basnan, an alleged associate of 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, reports his passport stolen to Houston police. [NEWSWEEK, 11/24/2002] This confirms that Basnan is in Houston on the same day that Crown Prince Abdullah, Prince Saud al-Faisal, and Saudi US Ambassador Prince Bandar meet with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, and National Security Adviser Rice at Bush’s Crawford ranch. [US-SAUDI ARABIAN BUSINESS COUNCIL, 4/25/2002] While in Texas, it is believed that Basnan “met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the United States.” [NEWSWEEK, 11/24/2002; GUARDIAN, 11/25/2002] The still-classified section of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry is said to discuss the possibility of Basnan meeting this figure at this time. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/2/2003] It is unknown if Basnan and/or the Saudi prince he allegedly meets have any connection to the three figures wanted by the FBI, or even if one or both of them could have been among the wanted figures. Basnan will be arrested in the US for visa fraud in August 2002, and then deported two months later (see August 22-November 2002). Entity Tags: Osama Basnan, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Nawaf Alhazmi, Saud al-Faisal, US Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Condoleezza Rice, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Bandar bin Sultan, Colin Powell, George W. Bush, Khalid Almihdhar Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Mid-May, 2002: CIA Proposes Waterboarding of Zubaida to Senior Administration Officials The CIA believes that recently captured al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) is withholding “imminent threat information” from his US interrogators. To that end, the CIA sends attorneys from its Office of General Counsel to meet with Attorney General John Ashcroft, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Rice’s deputy Stephen Hadley, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and other senior White House aides to discuss what the Senate Intelligence Committee will later term “the possible use of alternative interrogation methods that differed from the traditional methods used by the US military and intelligence community” (see April 2002). The CIA proposes several “alternative” methods that equate to torture, including waterboarding, for Zubaida. After the meeting, the CIA asks the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to prepare an opinion about the legality of the proposed interrogation methods. The CIA provides the OLC with, in the committee’s words, “written and oral descriptions of the proposed techniques.” The CIA also provides the OLC with information about the medical and psychological effects of the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training, which trains soldiers how to counter and resist torture and harsh interrogation techniques (see December 2001). [SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, 4/22/2009 ; BBC, 4/23/2009] Meanwhile, the CIA will send Zubaida to Thailand for torture (see March 2002 and April - June 2002). Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Abu Zubaida, Alberto R. Gonzales, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Justice, Stephen J. Hadley, Office of Legal Counsel, John Ashcroft Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

May 16, 2002: Nobody Predicted 9/11-Style Attacks, Says Condoleezza Rice

National Security Adviser Rice tries to explain what Bush knew and when in her May 16, 2002 press conference. [Source: CNN] National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice states, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile,” adding that “even in retrospect” there was “nothing” to suggest that. [WHITE HOUSE, 5/16/2002] Contradicting Rice’s claims, former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon acknowledges that such a scenario has long been taken seriously by US intelligence: “If you ask anybody could terrorists convert a plane into a missile? [N]obody would have ruled that out.” Rice also states, “The overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take place overseas.” [MSNBC, 5/17/2002] Slate awards Rice the “Whopper of the Week” when the title of Bush’s August 6 briefing is revealed: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” [SLATE, 5/23/2002] Rice later will concede that “somebody did imagine it” but will say she did not know about such intelligence until well after this conference. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/21/2002] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, World Trade Center, John Gannon, Pentagon Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

May 16, 2002: Condoleezza Rice Incorrectly Claims President Bush’s Pre-9/11 Warning Contains Only Historical Information National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice holds a press conference to respond to the public leak (see May 15, 2002) of the title of President Bush’s August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief item entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” (see August 6, 2001). Presidential Daily Brief - She asserts: “It was an analytic report that talked about [Osama bin Laden]‘s methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically, in 1997, in 1998.… I want to reiterate, it was not a warning. There was no specific time, place, or method mentioned.” [WHITE HOUSE, 5/16/2002] In April 2004, Rice will testify under oath before the 9/11 Commission and repeatedly assert that it was “a historical memo… not threat reporting” (see April 8, 2004). Comment by Philip Shenon - Author Philip Shenon will later comment, “She failed to mention, as would later be clear, that the PDB focused entirely on the possibility that al-Qaeda intended to strike within the United States; it cited relatively recent FBI reports of possible terrorist surveillance of government buildings in New York.” After rereading the transcript of the press conference, Shenon will call it a “remarkable document,” because “To many of the Commission’s staff, it offered proof of how, to Condoleezza Rice, everything is semantics. A threat is not a threat, a warning is not a warning, unless she says it is. The word historical appeared to have an especially broad definition to Rice. To her, a warning that was a few weeks or months old was of relatively little value because it was ‘historical.’” Aircraft as Weapons - Rice also says, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon—that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.” However, various government agencies were well aware of the concept of planes as missiles, including the FBI (see August 27, 2001), the Defense Department (see April 17-26, 2001), and the White House itself (see June 20, 2001). Shenon will point out that this news conference occurs eight months after the attacks, yet Rice is “suggesting that in all that time, no one had bothered to tell her [of these reports].” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 213, 237-239] Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Early Summer 2002: Condoleezza Rice Learns that Energy Department Scientists Disagree with CIA Opinion on Aluminum Tubes National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice learns that Department of Energy scientists disagree (see August 17, 2001) with the CIA’s assessment (see July 2001-2003) that a shipment of aluminum tubes intercepted on their way to Iraq (see July 2001) were to be used in a uranium enrichment program. She is informed that they believe “the tubes were probably intended for small artillery rockets.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/3/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Energy Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

July 2002: Complaints over Torture Results in Memo Granting Retroactive Legal ‘Immunity’ Military lawyers for a detainee believed to be Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) lodge numerous complaints with unidentified White House officials over the torture of their client. Zubaida has been subjected to waterboarding and other abuses by CIA interrogators (see March 28, 2002-Mid-2004, March 28-August 1, 2002, Mid-April-May 2002, Mid-April 2002, and Mid-May 2002 and After). The complaints trigger a hastily arranged meeting between Vice President Cheney, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s chief counsel David Addington, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and a number of officials from the Defense and State Departments. The discussion centers on the production of a legal memo specifically for the CIA that would provide retroactive legal immunity for the use of waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods. According to a subsequent investigation by the Justice Department (see February 22, 2009), the participants in the discussion believe that the methods used against Zubaida are legal because on February 7, 2002, President Bush signed an executive order stating that terrorists were not entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions (see February 7, 2002). Nevertheless, the participants agree that methods such as waterboarding probably violate international and domestic laws against torture, and therefore the CIA and the Bush administration would both benefit from a legal opinion stating what techniques are legal, and why they do not fit the legal definition of torture. The meeting results in the production of the so-called “Golden Shield” memo (see August 1, 2002). [PUBLIC RECORD, 2/22/2009] Entity Tags: US Department of State, Bush administration, Alberto R. Gonzales, Abu Zubaida, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Justice, Condoleezza Rice, Geneva Conventions, David S. Addington, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, US Department of Defense Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

EarlyJuly 2002: Condoleezza Rice Tells State Department Official Decision to Invade Iraq Has Been Made Richard Haass, the director of the policy-planning staff at the State Department, meets with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. “I raised this issue about were we really sure that we wanted to put Iraq front and center at this point, given the war on terrorism and other issues,” he later recalls in an interview with the New Yorker. “And she said, essentially, that that decision’s been made, don’t waste your breath.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 3/31/2003; MIRROR, 9/22/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Richard Haass Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

July 5, 2002: National Security Adviser Rice Says US Will Continue Providing Nuclear Assistance to North Korea, but Must Know It Has Violated Treaty National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice writes to US congresspeople, telling them that the Bush administration will continue to provide North Korea with shipments of heavy fuel oil and nuclear technology. These deliveries are in accordance with the Agreed Framework (see October 21, 1994). However, a few weeks previously the CIA had informed the White House that the Koreans had violated the framework by starting uranium enrichment, with Pakistani help (see June 2002). This meant that the Koreans had forfeited any entitlement to US assistance, but Rice, in the words of authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, “plumped for ignorance” of the CIA report. [NEW YORKER, 1/27/2003; LEVY AND SCOTT-CLARK, 2007, PP. 336-337] Entity Tags: Catherine Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US International Relations, A. Q. Khan's Nuclear Network

July 17, 2002: Rice Authorizes CIA to Implement Interrogation Plan for Zubaida CIA Director George Tenet meets with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Rice tells Tenet that the CIA can begin its proposed interrogation plan for captured alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002 and July 13, 2002), advising him “that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation” of Zubaida. Rice’s authorization is subject to a determination of legality by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (see August 1, 2002). [SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, 4/22/2009 ; BBC, 4/23/2009] The CIA has already begun torturing Zubaida (see April - June 2002, Mid-May, 2002, Mid-May 2002 and After, Mid-May 2002 and After, and June 2002). Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, George J. Tenet, Office of Legal Counsel, US Department of Justice, Abu Zubaida, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

August 2002: Top Bush Officials Form Group to Sell Iraq War to Public, Congress, and Allies White House chief of staff Andrew Card forms the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, which aims to “educate the public” about the alleged threat from Iraq. WHIG is formed concurrently with the Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). A senior official involved with the group will later describe it as “an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.” [WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2003] According to White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan, the WHIG is “set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the [Iraq] war,” and will continue “as a strategic communications group after the invasion had toppled Saddam [Hussein]‘s regime.” McClellan, who will become a full-fledged member of the WHIG after rising to the position of senior press secretary, will write: “Some critics have suggested that sinister plans were discussed at the WHIG meetings to deliberately mislead the public. Not so. There were plenty of discussions about how to set the agenda and influence the narrative, but there was no conspiracy to intentionally deceive. Instead, there were straightforward discussions of communications strategies and messaging grounded in the familiar tactics of the permanent campaign.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 142] Author Craig Unger will sum up the WHIG’s purpose up more bluntly: “to sell the war.” Members of the group include White House political advisers Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, and Nicholas E. Calio, and policy advisers led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. They meet weekly in the White House Situation Room. A “strategic communications” task force under the WHIG is charged with planning speeches and writing position papers. [WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2003; UNGER, 2007, PP. 241] Marketing Fear, Idea of Invasion as Reasonable - After Labor Day 2002—and after suitable test marketing—the group launches a full-fledged media marketing campaign. The images and storyline are simple and visceral: imminent biological or chemical attack, threats of nuclear holocaust, Saddam Hussein as a psychopathic dictator who can only be stopped by American military force. A key element of the narrative is forged documents “proving” Iraq sought uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, October 15, 2001, October 18, 2001, November 20, 2001, February 5, 2002, March 1, 2002, Late April or Early May 2002-June 2002, and Late June 2002). One of the main objectives is to swing the dialogue ever farther to the right, creating the assumption in the public mind that war with Iraq is a thoughtful, moderate, well-reasoned position, and delegitimizing any opposition. To that end, Cheney stakes out the “moderate” position, with statements like “many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon” (see August 26, 2002), and neoconservatives such as Michael Ledeen pushing the extremes ever rightward with calls to invade not only Iraq, but Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (see September 20, 2001, August 6, 2002, and September 4, 2002). The real push is delayed until the second week of September. As Card reminds the group, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” (see September 6, 2002). The first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a perfect opportunity to launch the new campaign (see September 8, 2002). [UNGER, 2007, PP. 250-251] Wilkinson, the group’s communications director, is tasked with preparing one of the group’s first public releases, a white paper that will describe the “grave and gathering danger” of Iraq’s “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program. Wilkinson will claim that Iraq “sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa.” [COUNTERPUNCH, 11/9/2005] 'Push[ing] the Envelope' - According to an intelligence source interviewed by the New York Daily News in October 2005, the group, on “a number of occasions,” will attempt “to push the envelope on things.… The [CIA] would say, ‘We just don’t have the intelligence to substantiate that.’” [NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 10/19/2005] In 2003, three unnamed officials will tell a Washington Post reporter that the group “wanted gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence,” what author and reporter Charlie Savage will call “a stark display of the political benefits that come with the power to control information.” [SAVAGE, 2007, PP. 357] In 2008, McClellan will write of “the heightened rhetoric on Iraq, including unequivocal statements that made things sound more certain than was known.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 137] Using Friendly Media Outlets - An important part of the WHIG strategy is to feed their messages to friendly journalists, such as New York Times reporter Judith Miller. James Bamford, in his book A Pretext for War, will write: “First OSP [Office of Special Plans] supplies false or exaggerated intelligence; then members of the WHIG leak it to friendly reporters, complete with prepackaged vivid imagery; finally, when the story breaks, senior officials point to it as proof and parrot the unnamed quotes they or their colleagues previously supplied.” [BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 325] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Scott McClellan, Saddam Hussein, Nicholas E. Calio, White House Iraq Group, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Mary Matalin, Andrew Card, Craig Unger, James Bamford, Charlie Savage, Karen Hughes, James R. Wilkinson, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

August 4, 2002: Time Magazine Briefly Mentions Key Pre-Attack Meeting Left out of 9/11 Commission Report An article in Time magazine briefly mentions a key meeting between the CIA and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, where top CIA officials warned Rice of an impending attack (see July 10, 2001). The meeting will be left out of the 9/11 Commission report, although CIA Director George Tenet will tell the Commission about it (see January 28, 2004). Time writes: “In mid-July, Tenet sat down for a special meeting with Rice and aides. ‘George briefed Condi that there was going to be a major attack,’ says an official; another, who was present at the meeting, says Tenet broke out a huge wall chart… with dozens of threats. Tenet couldn’t rule out a domestic attack but thought it more likely that al-Qaeda would strike overseas.” [TIME, 8/4/2002] According to a transcript of Tenet’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission, he told Rice there could be an al-Qaeda attack in weeks or perhaps months, that there would be multiple, simultaneous attacks causing major human casualties, and that the focus would be US targets, facilities, or interests. As Time reports, Tenet says the intelligence focuses on an overseas attack, but a domestic attack could not be ruled out. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/3/2006] News of the meeting will emerge in 2006 (see September 29, 2006), but the 9/11 Commission members will deny they were told about it. After the transcript is shared with reporters, they will reverse their denials (see September 30-October 3, 2006). Rice will also deny the meeting took place, only to reverse her position as well (see October 1-2, 2006). Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

August 15, 2002: Rice: Hussein an Imminent Global Threat; Gives No Specifics In an interview broadcast by BBC Radio 4’s Today Program, Condoleezza Rice says: “This is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbors and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, on all of us. There is a very powerful moral case for regime change. We certainly do not have the luxury of doing nothing…. Clearly, if Saddam Hussein is left in power doing the things that he is doing now, this is a threat that will emerge, and emerge in a very big way…. The case for regime change is very strong. This is a regime that we know has twice tried and come closer than we thought at the time to acquiring nuclear weapons. He has used chemical weapons against his own people and against his neighbors, he has invaded his neighbors, he has killed thousands of his own people. He shoots at our planes, our airplanes, in the no-fly zones where we are trying to enforce UN security resolutions…. History is littered with cases of inaction that led to very grave consequences for the world. We just have to look back and ask how many dictators who ended up being a tremendous global threat and killing thousands and, indeed, millions of people, should we have stopped in their tracks.” [REUTERS, 8/15/2002; GUARDIAN, 8/15/2002; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 8/16/2002; LONDON TIMES, 8/16/2002] Interestingly, Rice does not say Iraq has chemical, biological or nuclear arms. Instead, she speaks of the danger Saddam would pose, “if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.” [USA TODAY, 8/15/2002] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

Mid-August 2002: Decision Made to Increase Bombing in Iraq ‘No-Fly’ Zones During NSC Meeting at White House During a National Security Meeting at the White House, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice suggests ending the attacks on Iraq’s “no-fly” zones. But Gen. Tommy Franks disagrees. In his autobiography, American Soldier, he says he told Rice he wanted to continue the bombing in order to make Iraq’s defenses “as weak as possible.” In his book, Franks uses the term “spikes of activity” to refer to the increase in bombing raids. [LONDON TIMES, 6/19/2005] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Franks Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

August 27, 2002: Close Relationship Between Saudi Ambassador and Bush Raises Questions Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the US, meets privately for more than an hour with President Bush and National Security Adviser Rice in Crawford, Texas. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 8/28/2002] Press Secretary Ari Fleischer characterizes it as a warm meeting of old friends. Bandar, his wife Princess Haifa, and seven of their eight children stay for lunch. [FOX NEWS, 8/27/2002] Bandar, a long-time friend of the Bush family, donated $1 million to the George W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. [BOSTON HERALD, 12/11/2001] This relationship later becomes news when it is learned that Princess Haifa gave between $51,000 and $73,000 to two Saudi families in California who may have financed two of the 9/11 hijackers (see December 4, 1999). [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/23/2002; MSNBC, 11/27/2002] Entity Tags: Bandar bin Sultan, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Fall 2002: White House Creates New Interagency Task Force to Coordinate Iraq War Planning The Bush White House establishes a “high-level, interagency task force” charged with the task of “coordinating all Iraq war planning efforts and postwar initiatives.” The task force is headed by the Deputies Committee, which is made up of the “No. 2 officials at the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department, CIA, National Security Council, and vice president’s office.” The committee’s job is to review the work of other groups who have been involved in the planning of post-war Iraq, and provide recommendations to President Bush’s top advisers. The committee draws on the work of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) (see 2002-2003 and September 2002), Elliott Abrams’s group (see November 2002-December 2002 and December 2002) and the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” project (see April 2002-March 2003). Later accounts make clear that Abrams’s and the OSP’s recommendations have much more influence. The Deputies Committee usually meets in the White House situation room. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice keeps Bush updated on the progress of the task force’s work. In November, US News and World Report reports that a consensus is forming “at the highest levels of the Bush administration over how to run the country after Saddam and his regime are history.” [FINANCIAL TIMES, 11/4/2002; US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003; REUTERS, 11/25/2003] Some Conclusions of the Deputies Committee - No US-Created Government - The US should not create a provisional government or a government in exile. “We are not going to be in the business of choosing” who should lead Iraq, a senior official tells US News and World Report. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003] Lengthy Occupation - The invasion of Iraq will likely be followed by a lengthy occupation. This conclusion is passed on to Bush. “I have been with the president when he has been briefed about the need to have US forces there for an extended period of time,” a senior administration official will later tell US News and World Report. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003] Military Occupation Rule before Turning over Rule to Iraqis - During the first phase of the occupation, Iraq will be ruled by the military, probably a US general. The primary objective during this phase will be maintaining security and preventing the emergence of hostilities between the Shi’ites and Sunnis. Pentagon officials involved in planning this stage are reported to have reviewed the archived plans for the occupation of Germany and Japan. The second phase of the occupation will involve some sort of international civilian administration, with a diminished US military presence, and Iraqis will be given a larger role in the government. In the last phase, a constitution will be drafted, transferring power to a representative, multiethnic Iraqi government that commits to being free of weapons of mass destruction. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003] War Paid for by Iraqi Oil - Revenue generated from the sale of Iraq’s oil will be used for the cost of reconstruction and for conducting humanitarian operations. Hardliners however want the funds to pay for the military costs of the invasion as well. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003] Dissension over Roles of Iraqi Exiles - No firm decisions are made about the what role, if any, Iraqi exiles affiliated with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) will play in post-Saddam Iraq. Pentagon hardliners and some top officials in the White House favor giving them a prominent role, while the CIA and State Department adamantly oppose their inclusion, arguing that the exiles cannot be trusted. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003] US Will Not Be Seen as 'Liberators' - Iraqis will not necessarily treat the invading American soldiers as “liberators.” Many Iraqis harbor a deep resentment against the US for the decades-long sanction policy. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11/25/2003] Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, National Security Council, Office of the Vice President, US Department of State, Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Department of Defense, George W. Bush, Iraqi National Congress, Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Chalabi, Condoleezza Rice, Elliott Abrams Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September or October 2002: CIA and NSA Officials Warn Rice and Rumsfeld War Crimes Are Being Committed at Guantanamo; No Action Taken A CIA analyst visits Guantanamo and returns convinced that war crimes are being committed there. According to a former White House official, the analyst concludes that “if we captured some people who weren’t terrorists when we got them, they are now.” The CIA agent estimates at least more than half of the prisoners at Guantanamo do not belong there. [GUARDIAN, 9/13/2004] John A. Gordon, Deputy National Security Adviser for combating terrorism, a former deputy director of the CIA and a retired four-star general, reads the highly critical report on Guantanamo by the CIA analyst in the early autumn of 2002. The analyst’s account of US activities at Guantanamo, he says, is “totally out of character with the American value system.” He says he also believes “that if the actions at Guantanamo ever became public, it’d be damaging to the president.” He is convinced the report is important material. “We got it up to Condi [National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice],” he recalls. Gordon is most concerned about whether many of the prisoners at Guantanamo are not in fact innocent. “It was about how many more people are being held there that shouldn’t be,” a former White House official tells Seymour Hersh. “Have we really got the right people?” The briefing for Rice does not center on the treatment of the prisoners, but on questions of practicality: “Are we getting any intelligence? What is the process for sorting these people?” The concerns are serious enough for Rice to call a meeting at the White House with Gordon and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Rice allegedly says, “Let’s get the story right.” Rumsfeld seems to be agreeing and looks willing to deal with the problem. However, according to the disappointed White House official, “The Pentagon went into a full-court stall.” He says, “I was naive enough to believe that when a cabinet member says he’s going to take action, he will.” [GUARDIAN, 9/13/2004] Entity Tags: John A. Gordon, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

September 2002: Congressional ‘Top Secret’ Briefings Disclose Little New Information Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds a “top secret” briefing on Iraq for selected Congressional members, including, among others, Senator John McCain (R-AZ). The briefing takes place in the most secure room in the Capitol, a small, windowless chamber that is ostentatiously swept for bugs before the briefing. At the outset, the lawmakers are sworn to deepest secrecy. But during the briefing, Rumsfeld tells the assembled members nothing they couldn’t learn by watching the nightly news. McCain abruptly leaves the meeting, and later says, “It was a joke.” Vice President Cheney has said that the administration doesn’t trust the 535 members of Congress not to leak classified information, and therefore they must make their decisions concerning war with Iraq without the benefit of complete intelligence briefings (see Before September 9, 2002 and After). McCain reflects the feelings of many members in expressing his aggravation with the administration. “It becomes almost insulting after a while,” he says. “Everyone that goes to them is frustrated.” Rather than give “pretend” briefings that convey little information, McCain says, President Bush should just suspend the briefings entirely. House member Robert Menendez (D-NJ) says many members are skipping the briefings entirely to avoid signing a secrecy pledge that restricts what they can and cannot talk about. Menendez, briefed earlier by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet, says, “I heard nothing that was new, compelling, or that I have not heard before.” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says, “The White House will continue to as fully inform as possible members of Congress, while also preserving sensitive intelligence information so no inadvertent disclosure jeopardizes sources or methods or missions.” The White House has had some success with Democrats who might be resistant to its arguments for war by choosing to give more complete briefings to a few selected Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO). As a result, Democratic leaders in Congress are more supportive of the push towards war than many of their rank-and-file colleagues. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/15/2002] Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Menendez, US Department of Defense, John McCain, George W. Bush, Richard Gephardt, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

Fall 2002 and After: Vice President Cheney’s Power Peaks as He Uses Bureaucratic Strategies to Manage Foreign Policy Himself Vice President Cheney, widely acknowledged as a master bureaucrat, uses a variety of bureaucratic strategies to craft his own foreign policy strategies, including the promotion the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002), simultaneously undercutting and marginalizing the CIA. Many senior intelligence officials have no idea that the OSP even exists. “I didn’t know about its existence,” Greg Thielmann, the director of the State Department’s in-house intelligence agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), will say. Strategic Placement of Personal, Ideological Allies - Another Cheney strategy is personal placement. He moves his special adviser, neoconservative William Luti, into the OSP. Another influential neoconservative, Abram Shulsky, soon joins Luti there. A longtime associate of both Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Cambone, becomes a special assistant to Rumsfeld (see Early 2001). Cheney now has his allies at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In Cheney’s office, chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby serves as his liaison with the Pentagon. His chief counsel, David Addington, oversees Cheney’s aggressive and obsessively secretive legal staff. In the National Security Council (NSC), Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, keeps a close eye on Rice in case she shows signs of falling back in with her old mentor, Brent Scowcroft (see August 1998). John Bolton and David Wurmser keep tabs on Colin Powell at the State Department. Cheney has John Yoo (see (After 10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001) at the Justice Department. Not only does Cheney have highly placed loyalists in the State, Defense, and Justice Department, and in the NSC, he has vital allies in the Republican leadership in Congress. Managing the Oval Office - Cheney handles the Oval Office himself. A Pentagon official who works closely with Cheney will later observe that President Bush handles the executive branch much as he handled the Texas Rangers baseball team: ignoring much of the daily functions, leaving most policy decisions to others and serving as a “corporate master of ceremonies, attending to the morale of the management team and focusing on narrow issues… that interested him.” Cheney becomes, in author Craig Unger’s words, “the sole framer of key issues for Bush,” the single conduit through which information reaches the president. Cheney, the Pentagon official will later say, “rendered the policy planning, development and implementation functions of the interagency system essentially irrelevant. He has, in matters he has deemed important, governed. As a matter of protocol, good manners, and constitutional deference, he has obtained the requisite ‘check-mark’ of the president, often during one-on-one meetings after a Potemkin ‘interagency process’ had run its often inconclusive course.” [UNGER, 2007, PP. 249-250] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Stephen A. Cambone, Stephen J. Hadley, Texas Rangers, William Luti, Brent Scowcroft, Abram Shulsky, Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Special Plans, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, David Wurmser, David S. Addington, Craig Unger, National Security Council, John R. Bolton, Greg Thielmann, John C. Yoo, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: US International Relations

September 8, 2002: Rice Warns that ‘Smoking Gun’ of Proof of Iraqi Nuclear Weapons May Be a ‘Mushroom Cloud’ Condoleezza Rice appears on CNN to discuss the alleged threat posed to the US by Saddam Hussein. She insists that Iraq is intent on developing a nuclear weapon. “We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance—into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to—high-quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought, maybe six months from a crude nuclear device. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” [CNN, 9/8/2002; CNN, 9/8/2002; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/20/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] In his 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine, author Ron Suskind writes, “The statement sent off shock waves. Rice was criticized for fear-mongering, for suggesting that there was evidence that Hussein might have such a weapon. Arguments about proof, though, were missing the point—Rice’s roundabout argument was that the United States should act whether or not it found a “smoking gun.” She was showing an edge of the actual US policy: the severing of fact-based analysis from forceful response; acting on any inkling was now appropriate—to be safe, to be sure, to get an opponent before he can develop capability, so others know to not even start down that path.” [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 170] Entity Tags: White House Iraq Group, Ron Suskind, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda

September 8, 2002: White House Marketing Group Launches Iraq PR Blitz The White House Iraq Group (WHIG—see August 2002) launches its Iraq marketing campaign with a blitz of the Sunday morning talk shows. Vice President Dick Cheney appears on NBC (see September 8, 2002 and September 8, 2002), Secretary of State Colin Powell on Fox (see September 8, 2002), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on CBS (see September 8, 2002), and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on CNN (see September 8, 2002). Rice is the first to use the characterization, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” (see September 4, 2002), but President Bush and his senior officials repeat the phrase over and over in the following days. Author Craig Unger will note “Cheney’s most Machiavellian flourish” in having all four officials cite “evidence” of Iraq’s nuclear program, suspicious aluminum tubes, and attribute the information to the New York Times. Cheney and the others are referring to a story by the Times’ Judith Miller and Michael Gordon (see September 8, 2002) that Iraq had tried “to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes” that American experts believe could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. The story is attributed to “unnamed administration sources;” Miller and Gordon do not inform their readers that the story comes from Cheney’s office. In essence, Cheney planted disinformation in the New York Times, then cited the Times article to prove his contention. Gordon will later insist that he and Miller had to pry that story out of the administration, but Unger will note that it is hard to equate Gordon’s contention with four of the administration’s highest officials going on television simultaneously to spread the story and cite the Times article. Furthermore, because of the scheduling practices on the four networks, it appears that the four officials’ simultaneous appearances were arranged in advance. As the Times is the flagship newspaper of the US press, over 500 other newspapers and broadcast outlets pick up on the Times story and the officials’ appearances, giving the story tremendous visibility throughout the world. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 252-254] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, CNN, CBS News, Craig Unger, Judith Miller, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, NBC News, New York Times, Michael Gordon, White House Iraq Group, Fox News Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 9, 2002: Italian Intelligence Head Has Unusual Meeting with US Deputy National Security Adviser, Snubs CIA Director Nicolo Pollari, chief of SISMI, Italy’s military intelligence service, meets briefly with US National Security Council officials. [IL FOGLIO (MILAN), 10/28/2005] Present at the meeting are National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; her deputy, Stephen Hadley; and other US and Italian officials. [LA REPUBBLICA (ROME), 10/25/2005; AMERICAN PROSPECT, 10/25/2005; LA REPUBBLICA (ROME), 10/26/2005; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/28/2005; AGI ONLINE, 10/29/2005] Mysterious 'Courtesy Call' - Pollari can presumably set the record straight on the question of whether Iraq is trying to purchase aluminum tubes for manufacturing rockets or for use in building muclear weapons (see Between April 2001 and September 2002, April 11, 2001, July 25, 2002, September 24, 2002, October 1, 2002, Between December 2002 and January 2003, January 11, 2003, and March 7, 2003)—the aluminum tubes in question are exactly the same as the Italians use in their Medusa air-to-ground missile systems (see December 2002). Apparently Iraq is trying to reproduce “obsolete” missile systems dating back to when Italy and Iraq engaged in military trade. Pollari could also discuss the documents alleging that Iraq and Niger entered into a secret uranium deal (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001), a set of documents originally promulgated by SISMI and now thoroughly discredited (see February 5, 2003). But apparently Pollari discusses none of this with White House officials. Hadley, who hosts the meeting with Pollari, will refuse to say what they discuss, except to label Pollari’s visit “just a courtesy call,” and will add, “Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents passed.” Meeting with Hadley, Not Tenet, Significant - Author Craig Unger will write in 2007 that the real significance of the meeting is that Pollari meets with Hadley (widely considered an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney), and not with Pollari’s counterpart, CIA Director George Tenet. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi later says, “It is completely out of protocol for the head of a foreign intelligence service to circumvent the CIA. It is uniquely unusual.” Of the Iraq-Niger documents, Giraldi will say, “In spite of lots of people having seen the documents, and having said they were not right, they went around them.” Former CIA and State Department analyst Melvin Goodman will concur. “To me there is no benign interpretation of” the Pollari-Hadley meeting, Goodman will say. “At the highest level it was known that the documents were forgeries. Stephen Hadley knew it. Condi Rice [Hadley’s supervisor] knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew.” Neoconservative columnist, author, and former Italian intelligence asset Michael Ledeen, who has close ties with both Pollari and Hadley and may have played a part in producing the Iraq-Niger forgeries (see December 9, 2001). will deny setting up the meeting. And a former CIA official speaking on Tenet’s behalf will say that Tenet has no information to suggest that Pollari or elements of SISMI were trying to circumvent the CIA and go directly to the White House. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 258-259] (In 2006, history professor Gary Leupp will write that Ledeen is the informal liaison between SISMI and the Office of Special Plans—see September 2002). [COUNTERPUNCH, 11/9/2005] Downplaying Significance of Meeting - The Bush administration later insists the meeting was of little importance. Frederick Jones, a National Security Council spokesman, describes the meeting as a courtesy call of 15 minutes or less. He also says, “No one present at that meeting has any recollection of yellowcake [uranium oxide] being discussed or documents being provided.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005] Meeting Remains Secret until 2005 - This meeting is not reported until 2005, when Italy’s La Repubblica reports that a meeting—arranged through a backchannel by Gianni Castellaneta, the Italian prime minister’s diplomatic advisor—took place between Pollari and Hadley on this date. The report is refuted by Italy which insists it was actually a short meeting between Pollari and Rice. Italy says that although Hadley was present, he was really not part of the meeting. [AGI ONLINE, 10/29/2005] It is not clear from the reporting, however, if the meeting acknowledged by Italy and Washington, is in fact the same meeting reported by La Repubblica. Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen, Craig Unger, George J. Tenet, Gianni Castellaneta, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency, Stephen J. Hadley, Nicolo Pollari, Philip Giraldi, SISMI Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 10, 2002: Some Democrats Resist Push for Vote on Iraq Resolution Before Elections Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet give a classified briefing to some members of Congress in an attempt to persuade them of the immediate need to invade Iraq (see September 19, 2002 and September 24, 2002). After the briefing, several Democrats say they are unconvinced that Saddam Hussein poses an imminent threat to the US; some intimate that the White House is trying to “politicize” the debate on the resolution in order to impact the elections. Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says, “I know of no information that the threat is so imminent from Iraq” that Congress cannot wait until January to vote on a resolution. “I did not hear anything today that was different about [Saddam Hussein’s] capabilities,” save a few “embellishments.” She is joined by Tom Lantos (D-CA), a hawkish Democrat who supports the overthrow of the current Iraq regime, but who wants a special session of Congress after the November 5 elections to debate a war resolution. “I do not believe the decision should be made in the frenzy of an election year,” he says. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) agrees: “It would be a severe mistake for us to vote on Iraq with as little information as we have. This would be a rash and hasty decision” because the administration has provided “no groundbreaking news” on Iraq’s ability to strike the United States or other enemies with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Durbin’s fellow senator, Evan Bayh (D-IN) adds that while he agrees Iraq is a valid threat, the White House must do more to convince lawmakers and the American people of that threat before asking Congress to approve military action. “If the president wants to have a vote before the election, he needs to give the military threat, or he risks looking political. With that timing, he will run the risk of looking brazenly political,” Bayh says. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) agrees with Pelosi and Durbin, saying, “What was described as new is not new. It was not compelling enough” to justify war. “Did I see a clear and present danger to the United States? No.” Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid (D-NV) favors delaying the vote as well, but Daschle says he will likely allow the Senate to vote on the resolution if Bush meets several criteria, including obtaining more international support for a military campaign and providing senators a more detailed explanation of how the war would be conducted and how Iraq would be rebuilt. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) is one of the very few Republicans to oppose the resolution coming up for a vote before the elections. Most Republicans agree with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), who wants the White House to submit a specific war resolution by September 23 so it can be voted on before the October adjournment. But an unnamed House Republican leader also seems to believe the case Tenet and Rice presented is weak: he says, “Daschle will want to delay this and he can make a credible case for delay.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/10/2002; CNN, 9/10/2002; CNN, 9/11/2002] Entity Tags: Richard Durbin, Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, Tom Lantos, Robert Menendez, Harry Reid, Condoleezza Rice, House Intelligence Committee, Dick Armey, Nancy Pelosi, George J. Tenet, Evan Bayh Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 15, 2002: Rice Says Hussein Has Clear Links to Al-Qaeda In response to Tony Snow’s probing on Fox News Sunday as to whether or not President Bush was convinced there were links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is circumspect until she’s pressed. “He clearly has links to terrorism…—Links to terrorism [that] would include al-Qaeda….” [FOX NEWS, 9/15/2002; ISLAM ONLINE, 9/15/2002; CNN, 9/26/2002; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Tony Snow, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 16, 2002: Iraq Agrees to Readmit UN Weapons Inspectors; US, Britain Oppose Move Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri meets with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Arab League Secretary-General Amir Moussa and gives them a letter expressing Baghdad’s willingness to readmit the UN weapons inspectors without conditions. The offer is made after Saddam Hussein convened an emergency meeting in Baghdad with his cabinet and the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/16/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/16/2002; INDEPENDENT, 9/17/2002; NEW YORK TIMES, 9/17/2002] Iraq’s letter is effectively an agreement to the December 1999 UN Security Council Resolution 1284. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/18/2002] Kofi Annan tells reporters after the meeting, “I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return of the inspectors without conditions to continue their work and has also agreed that they are ready to start immediate discussions on the practical arrangements for the return of the inspectors to resume their work.” Annan credits the Arab League, which he says “played a key role” in influencing Saddam Hussein’s decision to accept the inspectors, and suggests that a recent speech by Bush also played a critical part in influencing Baghdad’s decision. [UN NEWS CENTER, 9/16/2002] UNMOVIC Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix also meets with Iraqi officials and it is reportedly agreed that weapons inspectors will return to Iraq on October 19. UNMOVIC spokesman Ewen Buchanan tells the BBC, “We are ready to discuss practical measures, such as helicopters, hotels, the installation of monitoring equipment and so on, which need to be put in place.” [BBC, 9/17/2002] The Bush administration immediately rejects the offer, calling it “a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong UN Security Council action,” in a statement released by the deputy press secretary. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 9/16/2002; WHITE HOUSE, 9/16/2002] And Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, tells reporters: “We’ve made it very clear that we are not in the business of negotiating with Saddam Hussein. We are working with the UN Security Council to determine the most effective way to reach our goal.” He then claims Iraq’s offer is a tactic to give “false hope to the international community that [President Saddam] means business this time,” adding, “Unfortunately, his more than decade of experience shows you can put very little into his words or deeds.” Two days later Bush will tell reporters that Saddam’s offer is “his latest ploy, his latest attempt not to be held accountable for defying the United Nations,” adding: “He’s not going to fool anybody. We’ve seen him before…. We’ll remind the world that, by defying resolutions, he’s become more and more of a threat to world peace. [The world] must rise up and deal with this threat, and that’s what we expect the Security Council to do.” [INDEPENDENT, 9/17/2002; AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 9/19/2002] Later that night, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice reportedly hold a conference call with Kofi Annan and accuse him of taking matters into his own hands. [VANITY FAIR, 5/2004, PP. 285] Britain supports the US position and calls for a UN resolution backed with the threat of force. [BBC, 9/17/2002] Other nations react differently to the offer. For example, Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, says: “It’s important that, through our joint efforts, we have managed to put aside the threat of a war scenario around Iraq and return the process to a political channel… It is essential in the coming days to resolve the issue of the inspectors’ return. For this, no new [Security Council] resolutions are needed.” [INDEPENDENT, 9/17/2002; BBC, 9/17/2002] Entity Tags: Hans Blix, Naji Sabri Hadithi, Kofi Annan, Dan Bartlett, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, Amir Moussa, Colin Powell, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

Late September 2002: Iraqi Foreign Minister Tells CIA Status of Iraq’s WMD Program; Bush Uninterested in Reports The French arrange a backchannel meeting between a friend of Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Hadithi and the CIA’s station chief in Paris, Bill Murray. Sabri’s friend, a Lebanese journalist, tells Murray that Sabri would be willing to provide the CIA with accurate information on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program in exchange for $1 million. The CIA agrees to advance the journalist $200,000. [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 45; MSNBC, 3/21/2006] When CIA Director George Tenet announces the deal during a high-level meeting at the White House—attended by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—the news is greeted with enthusiasm. “They were enthusiastic because they said, they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis,” Tyler Drumheller, the agency’s head of spying in Europe, later tells 60 Minutes. [CBS NEWS, 4/23/2006] But Sabri does not tell the CIA what the White House is expecting to hear. In a New York hotel room, the Lebanese journalist says that according to Sabri Iraq does not have a significant, active biological weapons program. He does however acknowledge that Iraq has some “poison gas” left over from the first Gulf War. Regarding the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program, Sabri’s friend says the Iraqis do not have an active program because they lack the fissile material needed to develop a nuclear bomb. But he does concede that Hussein desperately wants one. [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 62-63; MSNBC, 3/21/2006] “He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction programs,” Drumheller, will recall. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 246-247] The White House immediately loses interest in Sabri as a source after the New York meeting. Sabri, Bush says, is merely telling the US “the same old thing.” The CIA continues to corroborate material provided to the agency by Sabri. Wiretaps on Sabri’s phone conversations by French intelligence back up Sabri’s claims, but Bush could not care less. “Bush didn’t give a f_ck about the intelligence,” a CIA officer will later say. “He had his mind made up.” CIA agent Luis (whose full name has never been disclosed) and John Maguire, the chief and deputy chief of the Iraq Operations Group, also lose interest in the lead. In one confrontation between Maguire and Murray, Maguire allegedly says: “One of these days you’re going to get it. This is not about intelligence. This is about regime change.” Drumheller will agree, saying the White House is “no longer interested.… They said, ‘Well, this isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change.’” [MSNBC, 3/21/2006; CBS NEWS, 4/23/2006; UNGER, 2007, PP. 246-247] Entity Tags: Naji Sabri Hadithi, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Luis, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Bill Murray, Central Intelligence Agency, John Maguire Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 19, 2002: Reports that Aluminum Tubes May Not Be for Nuclear Use Ignored Eleven days after the New York Times published a front-page article detailing Iraq’s supposed attempt to procure components for creating nuclear weapons (see August 2002 and September 8, 2002), the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick has a story published, “Evidence on Iraq Challenged; Experts Question if Tubes Were Meant for Weapons Program,” that disputes the Times’ article and questions whether the components—aluminum tubes—are indeed intended for nuclear use. Warrick cites “a report by independent experts” from the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) questioning the conclusion that the tubes must be for use in constructing nuclear weapons (see September 23, 2002). The ISIS report also notes that the Bush administration is trying to rein in dissent among its own analysts about how to interpret the evidence provided by the aluminum tubes. “By themselves, these attempted procurements are not evidence that Iraq is in possession of, or close to possessing, nuclear weapons,” the report says. “They do not provide evidence that Iraq has an operating centrifuge plant or when such a plant could be operational.” In recent days, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has told television viewers that the tubes “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs” (see September 8, 2002). But Warrick’s story is buried on page 18 of the Post and widely ignored. Author Craig Unger will later write: “No one paid attention. Once the conventional wisdom had been forged, mere facts did not suffice to change things.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/19/2002; UNGER, 2007, PP. 254] Entity Tags: Institute for Science and International Security, Condoleezza Rice, Craig Unger, New York Times, Joby Warrick, Washington Post Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 20, 2002: Bush Administration Releases ‘National Security Strategy’ Document Advocating Preemptive War The Bush administration submits to Congress a 31-page document entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States.” Preemptive War - The National Security Strategy (NSS) openly advocates the necessity for the US to engage in “preemptive war” against nations it believes are likely to become a threat to the US’s security. It declares: “In an age where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle. The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.” The declaration that the US will engage in preemptive war with other nations reverses decades of American military and foreign policy stances; until now, the US has held that it would only launch an attack against another nation if it had been attacked first, or if American lives were in imminent danger. President Bush had first mentioned the new policy in a speech in June 2002 (see June 1, 2002), and it echoes policies proposed by Paul Wolfowitz during the George H. W. Bush administration (see March 8, 1992). [SHENON, 2008, PP. 128] US Must Maintain Military 'Beyond Challenge' - The National Security Strategy states that the ultimate objective of US national security policy is to “dissuade future military competition.” The US must therefore “build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge. Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” [LONDON TIMES, 9/21/2002] Ignoring the International Criminal Court - The NSS also states, “We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.” [US PRESIDENT, 9/2002] Declaring War on Terrorism Itself - It states: “The enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism—premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents.” Journalism professor Mark Danner will later comment in the New York Times: “Not Islamic terrorism or Middle Eastern terrorism or even terrorism directed against the United States: terrorism itself. ‘Declaring war on “terror,”’ as one military strategist later remarked to me, ‘is like declaring war on air power.’” [NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, 9/11/2005] Fundamental Reversal of Containment, Deterrence Principles - Washington Post reporter Tim Reich later describes the NSS as “revers[ing] the fundamental principles that have guided successive presidents for more than 50 years: containment and deterrence.” Foreign policy professor Andrew Bacevich will write that the NSS is a “fusion of breathtaking utopianism [and] barely disguised machtpolitik.” Bacevich continues, “It reads as if it were the product not of sober, ostensibly conservative Republicans but of an unlikely collaboration between Woodrow Wilson and the elder Field Marshal von Moltke.” [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, 3/24/2003] Written by Future Executive Director of 9/11 Commission - The document is released under George W. Bush’s signature, but was written by Philip D. Zelikow, formerly a member of the previous Bush administration’s National Security Council, and currently a history professor at the University of Virginia and a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Zelikow produced the document at the behest of his longtime colleague National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (see June 1, 2002). His authorship of the document will not be revealed until well after he is appointed executive director of the 9/11 commission (see Mid-December 2002-March 2003). Many on the Commission will consider Zelikow’s authorship of the document a prima facie conflict of interest, and fear that Zelikow’s position on the Commission will be used to further the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive war (see March 21, 2004). [US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 8/5/2005; SHENON, 2008, PP. 128] Entity Tags: Tim Reich, University of Virginia, National Security Council, Bush administration, Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 9/11 Commission, Andrew Bacevich, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Philip Zelikow Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US International Relations, 9/11 Timeline

September 28, 2002: New York Times Says Rice Misrepresenting Daniel Webster in Justifying Iraq Invasion New York Times journalist David Sanger criticizes the White House’s use of a piece by 19th century American orator Daniel Webster to justify its argument that attacking Iraq is “anticipatory self-defense.” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice cited Webster as a source of the idea that justifiable pre-emption should replace containment and deterrence as US policy. However, Sanger says that Rice is misrepresenting what Webster originally said. Webster used the term in 1837 to try to calm down Americans demanding another war with Britain, while simultaneously chastising the British for not exhausting diplomatic alternatives before burning a civilian US steamboat on the Niagara River after that steamboat fired cannons toward a British installation. Webster wrote that “striking first against an enemy was acceptable only when the necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” Sanger writes of Rice’s statement: “It was only the latest example of how history, definitions and defense doctrines are being twisted to fit the Iraq debate. In its rush to convince Congress and the United Nations of the need to act quickly, the Bush administration has bandied about some very different concepts—pre-emption, preventive war and Ms. Rice’s ‘anticipatory self-defense’ (a phrase Webster never used)—as if they were the same thing. Experts in the field say they are not.” Author and foreign policy expert Michael Walzer of Princeton University says: “There’s a standard distinction here, and a very important one. Condoleezza Rice says we don’t have to wait to be attacked; that’s true. But you do have to wait until you are about to be attacked.” Harvard’s Graham Allison says a better example is one most Americans will not prefer to use: the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/28/2002] Entity Tags: David Sanger, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Daniel Webster, Saddam Hussein, Graham Allison, Michael Walzer Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda

Early October 2002: Bush Receives Intelligence Memo Noting Dissents About Iraqi Aluminum Tubes President Bush receives a one-page, highly classified “President’s Summary” of the US intelligence community’s new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002). The summary discusses the high-strength aluminum tubes that many administration and Pentagon officials believe are being used to help Iraq construct a nuclear weapon. Both the Energy Department (DOE) and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) believe the tubes are “intended for conventional weapons,” contradicting the view of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA and DIA. The public will not be told of Bush’s personal knowledge of the DOE and INR dissents until March 2006. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and other senior officials will try to explain the administration’s stance on Iraq’s nuclear program by asserting that neither Bush, Vice President Cheney, nor Rice ever saw the dissents. For months, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell (see February 5, 2003), and others will cite the tubes as indisputable proof of an Iraqi nuclear program. US inspectors will discover, after the fall of the Iraqi regime, that the nuclear program had been dormant for over ten years, and the aluminum tubes used only for artillery shells. Inquiry - The Bush administration will refuse to release the summary to Congressional investigators who wish to know the basis for the Bush administration’s assertions about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. A senior official calls it the “one document which illustrates what the president knew and when he knew it.” It is likely that Bush never read the dissents in the report itself, as administration officials will confirm they do not believe Bush would have read the entire NIE, and it is likely that he never made it to the dissents, in a special text box positioned well away from the main text of the report. However, the one-page summary was written specifically for Bush, was handed to Bush by then-CIA director George Tenet, Bush read the summary in Tenet’s presence, and the two discussed the subject at length. Cheney was given virtually the same information as Bush concerning every aspect of the intelligence community’s findings on Iraq. Nevertheless, Bush and other officials (see July 11, 2003) will claim for months that they were unaware of the dissents. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 3/2/2006] Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Colin Powell, Defense Intelligence Agency, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, US Department of Energy, US Department of Defense, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

October 1, 2002: US Intelligence Completes National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq

UNSCOM photo of an Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle. [Source: CIA] The National Intelligence Council, a board of senior analysts that prepares reports on crucial national security issues, completes a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. The purpose of an NIE is to provide policy-makers with an intelligence assessment that includes all available information on a specific issue so they can make sound policy decisions. The formal document is supposed to be the result of a collaborative effort of the entire intelligence community and is supposed to be untainted by political interests. The decision to produce the assessment on Iraq followed criticisms that the administration had already made a decision to invade Iraq without having thoroughly reviewed all available intelligence on Iraq. Congress wanted the NIE completed prior to voting on a bill authorizing the president to use force against Iraq (see September 5, 2002). NIEs such as this usually take months to prepare, however this document took a mere three weeks. The person in charge of preparing the document was weapons expert Robert Walpole. According to the Independent of London, Walpole has a track record of tailoring his work to support the biases of his superiors. “In 1998, he had come up with an estimate of the missile capabilities of various rogue states that managed to sound considerably more alarming than a previous CIA estimate issued three years earlier,” the newspaper later reports. “On that occasion, he was acting at the behest of a congressional commission anxious to make the case for a missile defense system; the commission chairman was none other than Donald Rumsfeld….” [INDEPENDENT, 11/3/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/3/2004] Summary of NIE Conclusions - The NIE says there are potentially links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but uses cautionary language and acknowledges that its sources—Iraqi defectors and captured al-Qaeda members—have provided conflicting reports. The sections dealing with weapons of mass destruction are also filled with caveats and nuanced statements. In the second paragraph of its “key judgment” section, the NIE states that US intelligence lacks “specific information” on Iraq’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And while the NIE says that Iraq probably has chemical and biological weapons, it also says that US intelligence analysts believe that Saddam Hussein would only launch an attack against the US if he felt a US invasion were inevitable. It also concludes that Saddam would only provide terrorists with chemical or biological agents for use against the United States as a last resort in order to “exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.” [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 10/1/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 6/22/2003; AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 11/30/2003] Reconstituted nuclear weapons programs - According to the NIE, “most” of the US’ six intelligence agencies believe there is “compelling evidence that Saddam [Hussein] is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad’s nuclear weapons program.” The one agency that disagrees with this conclusion is the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which says in its dissenting opinion: “The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programs, INR is unwilling to… project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening.” It is later learned that nuclear scientists in the Department of Energy’s in-house intelligence office were also opposed to the NIE’s conclusion and wanted to endorse the State’s alternative view. However, the person representing the DOE, Thomas Ryder, silenced them and inexplicably voted to support the position that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program (see Late September 2002). The DOE’s vote was seen as critical, since the department’s assessment was supposed to represent the views of the government’s nuclear experts. [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 10/1/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 7/19/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 2/10/2004; KNIGHT RIDDER, 2/10/2004] Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Africa - According to the NIE, Iraq is “vigorously trying” to obtain uranium and “reportedly” is working on a deal to purchase “up to 500 tons” of uranium from Niger. It reads: “A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of ‘pure uranium’ (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement. Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” But the alternative view—endorsed by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)—says that it is doubtful Iraq is trying to procure uranium from Africa. ”(T)he claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious,” it reads. [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 10/1/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 7/19/2003] Iraqi attempts to obtain aluminum tubes - The NIE says that most “agencies believe that Saddam’s personal interest in and Iraq’s aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors—as well as Iraq’s attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools—provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad’s nuclear weapons program.” To support its analysis of the tubes, it includes a chart which compares the dimensions of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq with those that would be needed for a “Zippe-type” centrifuge. The chart’s comparison of the tubes makes it appear that the tubes are similar. But the NIE neglects to say that the aluminum tubes are an exact match with those used in Iraq’s 81-millimeter rocket. The estimate also claims that the tubes are not suitable for rockets. The assertion ignores the fact that similar tubes are used in rockets from several countries, including the United States. [US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004, PP. 84; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/3/2004] It does note however that the 900 mm tubes ordered by Iraq would have to have been cut in half to make two 400 mm rotors, and that the tubes would have needed other modifications as well in order to be used in centrifuge rotors. [THE COMMISSION ON THE INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES OF THE UNITED STATES REGARDING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (AKA 'ROBB-SILBERMAN COMMISSION'), 3/31/2005] The NIE’s conclusion about the tubes is challenged by two US intelligence agencies, the DOE’s in house intelligence agency, and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In its dissenting opinion, the DOE says, “It is well established in open sources that bare aluminum is resistant to UF6 and anodization is unnecessary for corrosion resistance, either for the aluminum rotors or for the thousands of feet of aluminum piping in a centrifuge facility. Instead, anodization would likely introduce uncertainties into the design that would need to be resolved before a centrifuge could be operated.” The DOE’s dissenting opinion—written mainly by nuclear physicist William Domke at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and nuclear physicist Jeffrey Bedell at the Los Alamos National Laboratory—also notes that anodization is a standard practice in missile construction for environmental protection. The Energy Department’s centrifuge physicists suggested more than a year before that the tubes were meant to serve as casings for conventional rockets (see May 9, 2001), but CIA analysts held fast to their theory. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/19/2003; USA TODAY, 7/31/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 10/26/2003; US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004, PP. 59] Years later a DOE intelligence analyst will tell two journalists, “[The DOE’s nuclear scientists] are the most boring people. Their whole lives revolve around nuclear technology. They can talk about gas centrifuges until you want to jump out of a window. And maybe once every ten years or longer there comes along an important question about gas centrifuges. That’s when you should really listen to these guys. If they say an aluminum tube is not for a gas centrifuge, it’s like a fish talking about water.” [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 40] The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, similarly writes in its dissenting footnote: “In INR’s view Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq’s nuclear weapon program.” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/19/2003; USA TODAY, 7/31/2003] Chemical and Biological Weapons - On the question of chemical and biological weapons, the NIE says: “We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.” But the document also highlights the belief that it is unlikely that Iraq has any intention to use these against the US. “… Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [Chemical/Biological Weapons] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington with a stronger case for making war.” Iraq would probably only use such weapons against the United States if it “feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge.” [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 10/1/2002] Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - Citing defectors and exiles, the NIE states that Iraq possesses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which can be used to deploy biological and chemical weapons. But the document includes a dissenting opinion by the Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center. The center, which controls most of the US military’s UAV fleet, says there is little evidence that Iraq’s drones are related to the country’s suspected biological weapons program. Current intelligence suggests that the drones are not capable of carrying much more than a camera and a video recorder. The Air Force believes that Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are for reconnaissance, like its counterparts in the US. The dissenting opinion reads: “… The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq’s new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/24/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 9/26/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 2/10/2004] Bob Boyd, director of the Air Force Intelligence Analysis Agency, will tell reporters in August 2003 that his department thought the allegation in the NIE “was a little odd,” noting that Air Force assessments “all along” had said that reconnaissance, not weapons delivery, was the purpose of Iraq’s drones. “Everything we discovered strengthened our conviction that the UAVs were to be used for reconnaissance,” he will explain. “What we were thinking was: Why would you purposefully design a vehicle to be an inefficient delivery means? Wouldn’t it make more sense that they were purposefully designing it to be a decent reconnaissance UAV?” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/24/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 9/26/2003] The NIE also says that Iraq is attempting to obtain commercially available route-planning software that contains topographic data of the United States. According to the NIE, this data could facilitate targeting of US sites. But Air Force analysts were not convinced by the argument, noting that this sort of information could easily be retrieved from the Internet and other highly accessible sources. “We saw nothing sinister about the inclusion of the US maps in route-planning software,” Boyd will tell reporters. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/26/2003] Analysts at the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency are said to back the Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center’s position. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/24/2003] Appendices - Most of the caveats and dissents in the NIE are relegated to a variety of appendices at the end of the document. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 266] Aftermath - After the completion of the National Intelligence Estimate, the Bush administration will continue to make allegations concerning Iraq’s weapons capabilities and ties to militant Islamic groups, but will include none of the qualifications and nuances that are present in the classified NIE. After excerpts from the classified version of the NIE are published in the press in July of 2003 (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), administration officials will claim that neither Bush, Rice, nor other top officials were informed about the alternative views expressed by the DOE, INR, and the Air Force intelligence agency. They will also assert that the dissenting views did not significantly undermine the overall conclusion of the NIE that Iraq was continuing its banned weapons program despite UN resolutions. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/19/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/19/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/27/2003] But this claim is later disputed in an article by the Washington Post, which reports: “One person who has worked with Rice describes as ‘inconceivable’ the claims that she was not more actively involved. Indeed, subsequent to the July 18 briefing, another senior administration official said Rice had been briefed immediately on the NIE—including the doubts about Iraq’s nuclear program—and had ‘skimmed’ the document. The official said that within a couple of weeks, Rice ‘read it all.’” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/27/2003] The official’s account, will in fact be confirmed by Rice herself, who reportedly tells Gwen Ifill at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Dallas on August 7, 2003: “I did read everything that the CIA produced for the president on weapons of mass destruction. I read the National Intelligence Estimate cover to cover a couple of times. I read the reports; I was briefed on the reports. This is—after 20 years, as somebody who has read a lot of intelligence reports—this is one of the strongest cases about weapons of mass destruction that I had ever read.” [DAILY HOWLER, 8/11/2003] Conclusions 'Overstated' - George Bush is also provided with a summary of the NIE’s dissenting views. According to the Robb-Silberman report, released in early 2005, the president’s summary of the NIE notes that “INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapon uses.” [THE COMMISSION ON THE INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES OF THE UNITED STATES REGARDING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (AKA 'ROBB-SILBERMAN COMMISSION'), 3/31/2005] Additionally, senior CIA analyst Stuart Cohen, the acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council at this time, who helped write the document, will tell the Agence France-Presse, “Any reader would have had to read only as far as the second paragraph of the Key Judgments to know that as we said, ‘we lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD program.’” The Key Judgments section is also where INR’s detailed dissent on the aluminum tubes allegation was located. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 11/30/2003] A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation will determine in July 2004 that “most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting.” [US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004, PP. 59] And in 2006, one of the report’s authors, CIA senior analyst Paul Pillar, will admit the NIE had been written with the intent of “strengthen[ing] the case of going to war with the American public.” [PBS FRONTLINE, 6/20/2006] NIE 'Distorted' Due to Political Pressures, Author Claims - In 2007, author Craig Unger will write, “At the time, to virtually everyone in Congress, the NIE was still sacrosanct. It was still the last word in American intelligence. Yet it had been distorted thanks to political pressures from the neocons and the White House. If one took it seriously, the Niger documents were real. Curveball had credibility. And the aluminum tubes were part of Saddam’s nuclear program. Only one conclusion could be drawn: Saddam Hussein post an extraordinarily grave threat.” [UNGER, 2007, PP. 266] Entity Tags: Bob Boyd, Condoleezza Rice, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Paul R. Pillar, US Congress, Jeffrey Bedell, Stuart Cohen, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 5, 2002: CIA Warns White House Not to Include Africa-Uranium Allegation in Cincinnati Speech Preparing for a major speech by President Bush on Iraq (see October 7, 2002), the National Security Council has sent the sixth draft of the speech to the CIA for vetting. It includes a line saying that Iraq “has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa—an essential ingredient in the enrichment process.” It is essentially the same language turned down by the CIA for an earlier speech (see September 11, 2002). In response, the CIA’s associate deputy director for intelligence [ADDI] sends a four-page memo to Bush administration officials, including Bush’s Deputy National Security Adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and the chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, expressing doubt over claims that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Niger. On page three of the memo, the ADDI advises removing the allegation from the draft of Bush’s upcoming speech in Cincinnati. “[R]emove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue (see September 24, 2002). Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory.” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/23/2003; UNGER, 2007, PP. 261-262] Despite the warning, the White House refuses to make substantial changes. Draft seven of the speech, completed later in the day (see October 6, 2002), contains the passage, “[T]he regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa.” [US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004] Hadley will later claim in July 2003 that he did not brief his boss, Condoleezza Rice, on the memo. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/27/2003] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Condoleezza Rice, Michael Gerson, Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 6, 2002: CIA Again Warns White House Not to Include Africa-Uranium Allegation in Cincinnati Speech The CIA’s associate deputy director for intelligence (ADDI) receives draft seven of President Bush’s upcoming speech in Cincinnati and sees that the speechwriters have failed to remove the passage on Iraq’s alleged attempt to purchase uranium from Niger, as the CIA had advised the day before (see October 5, 2002). The revised passage reads in part, “the regime has been caught attempting to purchase a substantial amount of uranium oxide from sources in Africa.” The ADDI contacts Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and tells him that the “president should not be a fact witness on this issue” because the agency’s analysts consider the reporting “weak” and say it is based solely on one source. Tenet then personally calls White House officials, including Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, with the CIA’s concerns. The allegation is finally removed from the speech. Later in the day, to press its point even further, the CIA faxes another memo, summarizing its position on the Africa-uranium claim. The memo states: “[M]ore on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British.” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/13/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/23/2003; US CONGRESS, 7/7/2004; UNGER, 2007, PP. 261-262] The memo’s recipients include National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Hadley. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/23/2003] Bush will not use the reference in his speech—although he does repeat the “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” trope (see September 4, 2002)—but the administration’s neoconservatives, such as Hadley, are not through with the issue. They will continue trying to insert the language into other speeches (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Larry Wilkerson, the chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, will later say: “That was their favorite technique. Stick that baby in there 47 times and on the 47th time it would stay. I’m serious. It was interesting to watch them do this. At every level of the decision-making process you had to have your axe out, ready to chop their fingers off. Sooner or later you would miss one and it would get in there.” [UNGER, 2007, PP. 261-262] Entity Tags: Lawrence Wilkerson, Central Intelligence Agency, Condoleezza Rice, George J. Tenet, Stephen J. Hadley Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Before October 7, 2002: White House Communications Aide Shocked by Administration’s Lack of Hard Evidence Against Iraq National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice invites White House communications aide Adam Levine into the White House Situation Room to look over hundreds of highly classified intelligence photos that supposedly constitute evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Levine is supposed to select a few choice photos to release with Bush’s speech in Cincinnati (see October 7, 2002) to strengthen the administration’s case. One of the pictures that catches Levine’s eye is a photo of a UAV. But when he looks closely, he sees that there is a Czech flag on it. One of Rice’s aides explains that the UAV was on display at a German air show. The administration believes it is like the ones Saddam has. Levine also sees a series of before-and-after shots of weapons sites visited by UN inspectors. But the photographs are from 1998. As Levine continues his search for the perfect photo, he realizes that none of them really constitute evidence of anything. “I remember having this sinking feeling,” he later recalls. “Oh my God, I hope this isn’t all we have. We’ve got to have better stuff than this.” [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 145] Entity Tags: Adam Levine, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

November 3, 2002: CIA Assassinates Al-Qaeda Suspects with Remote Drone One Day Before US Elections

Qaed Senyan al-Harethi. [Source: Yemen Observer] A CIA-operated Predator drone fires a missile that destroys a truck of suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack is Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a top al-Qaeda operative, but five others are also killed, including American citizen Kamal Derwish. [WASHINGTON POST, 11/4/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/3/2002] Al-Harethi is said to have been involved in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Bush administration officials say Derwish was the ringleader of a sleeper cell in Lackawanna, New York (see September 13, 2002). [WASHINGTON POST, 11/9/2002; NEWSWEEK, 11/11/2002] A former high-level intelligence officer complains that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants “to take guys out for political effect.” Al-Harethi was being tracked for weeks through his cell phone. [NEW YORKER, 12/16/2002] The attack happens one day before mid-term elections in the US. Newsweek will note that timing of the strike “was, at the very least, fortuitous” for the Bush administration. [NEWSWEEK, 11/11/2002] New Yorker magazine will later report, “The Yemeni government had planned to delay an announcement of the attack until it could issue a joint statement with Washington. When American officials released the story unilaterally, in time for Election Day, the Yemenis were angry and dismayed.” [NEW YORKER, 12/16/2002] Initial reports suggest the truck was destroyed by a car bomb. But on November 5, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz will brag about the strike on CNN, thus ruining the cover story and revealing that the truck was destroyed by a US missile (see November 5, 2002). [NEWSWEEK, 11/11/2002] US intelligence appears to have learned of al-Harethi’s whereabouts after interrogating Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, captured the month before (see Early October 2002). Entity Tags: Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, Scott L. Silliman, Kamal Derwish, Condoleezza Rice, Al-Qaeda, Paul Wolfowitz, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline, Civil Liberties

November 5- December, 2002: Remote Strike in Yemen Raises Legal and Ethical Issues

Kamal Derwish. [Source: PBS] The revelation that the US killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in Yemen with a Predator missile strike (see November 3, 2002 and November 5, 2002) sparks a debate about the morality and legality of remote attacks outside of war zones. The Bush administration had previously criticized Israel’s policy of “targeted killings” of Palestinian militants. Newsweek comments, “A State Department spokesman bobbed and weaved and tried to draw distinctions. But, privately, administration officials say the difference is really one of scale and frequency.” [NEWSWEEK, 11/11/2002] Many international lawyers and some foreign governments question the legality of the assassination. [GUARDIAN, 11/6/2002] For decades, the US government has been prohibited from conducting assassinations. The Bush administration says it still adheres to that policy but makes an exception for “enemy combatants” such as al-Qaeda leaders. In December 2002, it will be revealed that President Bush approved a secret “high-value target list” of about two dozen terrorist leaders, giving the CIA basic executive and legal authority to either kill or capture those in the list. The CIA is also empowered to capture or kill terrorists not mentioned in the list (see September 17, 2001). [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/15/2002] Additional controversy is generated when it is discovered that US citizen Kamal Derwish was one of those killed in the strike. Derwish is alleged to have been connected to an al-Qaeda cell in Buffalo, New York. US officials say the CIA has the legal authority to target and kill US citizens it believes are working for al-Qaeda (see July 22, 2002). [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/3/2002] The New Yorker reveals that there were two planned Predator strikes in Yemen called off at the last minute that turned out to be aimed at innocent people instead of al-Harethi. One recently retired Special Forces operative who served on high-level planning staffs at the Pentagon warns that the civilians running the military are no longer trying to “avoid the gray area.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is reportedly behind the effort to use the CIA and special forces for more remote killings (see July 22, 2002). One former high-level intelligence officer complains, “They want to turn these guys into assassins. They want to go on rumors—not facts—and go for political effect, and that’s what the Special Forces Command is really afraid of.” [NEW YORKER, 12/16/2002] Noting that in its battle against al-Qaeda, the US has effectively deemed the entire planet a combat zone, Scott Silliman, director of Duke University’s Center on Law, Ethics and National Security says, “Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, DC?…The answer is yes, you could.” But National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says, “No constitutional questions are raised here.” [CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 11/24/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/3/2002] Entity Tags: Scott L. Silliman, Condoleezza Rice, Kamal Derwish, Donald Rumsfeld, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline

November 7, 2002: Bush Says War Is His Last Choice; Press Secretary Will Dispute Claim A reporter asks President Bush if he thinks a war against Iraq might be a bad idea given widespread concerns that it could “generate a tremendous amount of anger and hatred at the United States… [thus] creating many new terrorists who would want to kill Americans.” Bush responds that the US should not avoid taking action out of fear that it might “irritate somebody [who] would create a danger to Americans.” He adds that no decision has been made with regard to using force against Iraq. “Hopefully, we can do this peacefully,” he says. “And if the world were to collectively come together to do so, and to put pressure on Saddam Hussein and convince him to disarm, there’s a chance he may decide to do that. And war is not my first choice… it’s my last choice. But nevertheless, it is… an option in order to make the world a more peaceful place.” [US PRESIDENT, 11/11/2002] McClellan: War 'Inevitable' - However, current deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will dispute Bush’s claim. In 2008, he will write: “Bush made sure this initiative was closely held, known only by a few people who could be trusted not to leak it. But it meant that, in effect, Bush had already made the decision to go to war—even if he convinced himself it might still be avoided. In the back of his mind, he would be convinced in Iraq, as on other issues, that until he gave the final order to commence war the decision was never final. But as I would learn upon reflection, war was inevitable given the course of action the president set from the beginning.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 127-128] Enabled by Foreign Advisers - McClellan will continue: “Did Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condi Rice, fully calibrate for Bush’s headstrong style of leadership or appreciate the need to keep his beliefs in proper check? That will be for historians to judge. But overall, Bush’s foreign policy advisers played right into his thinking, doing little to question it or to cause him to pause long enough to fully consider the consequences before moving forward. And once Bush set a course of action, it was rarely questioned. That is what Bush expected and made known to his top advisers. The strategy for carrying out a policy was open for debate, but there would be no hand-wringing, no second-guessing of the policy once it was decided and set in motion.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 127-128] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

December 2002: President Bush Expresses Confidence Victory in Iraq Will Solve Counterterrorism Problems President Bush meets with his cabinet-level advisers to review progress with counterterrorism efforts. According to author James Risen, one participant in the meeting will later recall that “several senior officials, including [CIA Director] Tenet, [National Security Adviser] Rice, and [Deputy Defense Secretary] Wolfowitz, voiced concerns about the ability of al-Qaeda-style terrorists to recruit and gain support on a widespread basis in the Islamic world. Did the United States have a strategy to counter the growth potential of Islamic extremism? ‘The president dismissed them, saying that victory in Iraq would take care of that. After he said that, people just kind of sat down,’ the participant recalled.” [RISEN, 2006, PP. 169-170] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, George J. Tenet Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

December 1, 2002: White House Stops Israeli-Palestinian ‘Road Map’ Negotiations at Israel’s Request, Angering Arab Partners National Security Council official Flynt Leverett, the head of Mideast affairs and the prime proponent of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians in that organization (see December 2001-January 2002 and April 2002), confronts his boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, over the Bush administration’s continued lack of progress on such negotiations, and over its repeated broken promises to Arab heads of state (see Spring 2002 and Summer 2002). Leverett has fielded a furious phone call from Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Marwan Muasher, who has just been told by Rice that all negotiations over the so-called “road map to peace” are at an end. “Do you have any idea how this has pulled the rug out from under us, from under me?” Muasher demanded. “I’m the one that has to go into Arab League meetings and get beat up and say, ‘No, there’s going to be a plan out by the end of the year.’ How can we ever trust you again?” Leverett demands an explanation from Rice. She tells him that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called for early elections, and he asked President Bush to put all negotiations on hold until after the elections. Leverett, unable to swallow his indignation any longer, retorts: “You told the whole world you were going to put this out before Christmas. Because one Israeli politician told you it’s going to make things politically difficult for him, you don’t put it out? Do you realize how hard that makes things for all our Arab partners?” Rice remains impassive. “If we put the road map out,” she says, “it will interfere with Israeli elections.” Leverett replies, “You are interfering with Israeli elections, just in another way.” Rice concludes the discussion, “Flynt, the decision has already been made.” Leverett, disgusted with the lack of sincerity towards the negotiations and with the impending Iraq invasion, will quit the NSC in March 2003. [ESQUIRE, 10/18/2007] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Ariel Sharon, Bush administration, National Security Council, Flynt Leverett, Marwan Muasher, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: US International Relations

Late December 2002: White House Tells 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean He Must ‘Stand Up’ for President Bush Newly appointed 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean comes to the White House to meet top officials and discuss the 9/11 investigation. Although a Republican, Kean does not like the “message discipline” of the current White House, where spokesmen keep repeating the same thing over and over. Kean will later tell author Philip Shenon that he is surprised when the officials he meets use the same tactic and keep telling him the same things. Kean thinks the officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and chief of staff Andy Card, are sticking to a pre-agreed script and wonders whether they are reading off the same talking points cards. They keep telling him: “We want you to stand up. You’ve got to stand up,” “You’ve got to have courage,” and “We don’t want a runaway commission.” Kean is baffled by this and thinks it might be some sort of code. He decides they must want him to stand up for the truth and have the courage to follow the evidence wherever it leads. However, Kean will later say: “I decided as the process went on, that’s not what they meant at all.… You’ve got to stand up for the president, and you’ve got to protect him in the process. That’s what they meant.” Card also suggests some names for the key position of executive director of the Commission, but the post goes to somebody else, Philip Zelikow, in the end (see Shortly Before January 27, 2003). [SHENON, 2008, PP. 35-39] Entity Tags: Thomas Kean, Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Card Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

December 19, 2002: US Says UN Ignoring Iraq-Niger Uranium Deal The State Department publishes a fact sheet titled “Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council,” which states that in its December 2002 declaration (see December 7, 2002) to the UN, Iraq “ignores [its] efforts to procure uranium from Niger.” [US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 12/19/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/12/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/13/2003] Secretary of State Colin Powell rejects the UN dossier, in part because it does not account for the Nigerien uranium (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001) and aluminum tubes (see Between April 2001 and September 2002) Iraq is supposedly using to make nuclear weapons. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 268] But at this time, there is no evidence that Iraq had in fact sought to obtain uranium from Niger. Prior to the fact sheet’s publication, the CIA had warned the State Department about this and recommended that the phrase be removed—advice the State Department chose to ignore. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/12/2003] Throughout the rest of December, almost every statement the US goverment makes on Iraq will include references to the Nigerien uranium deal. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Powell will all state publicly that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 268] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, Colin Powell, United Nations Security Council, Condoleezza Rice, US Department of State Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Early January 2003: President Bush Reportedly Tells Condoleezza Rice ‘We’re Going to Have To Go To War’ According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice visits George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush tells her: “We’re not winning. Time is not on our side here. Probably going to have to, we’re going to have to go to war.” [WASHINGTON POST, 4/17/2004] When the contents of Woodward’s book are reported in mid-April 2004, many people interpret Bush’s statement as a decision to go to war. But Rice will deny that that was the case. “… I just want it to be understood: That was not a decision to go to war,” she will say. “The decision to go to war is in March. The president is saying in that conversation, I think the chances are that this is not going to work out any other way. We’re going to have to go to war.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/19/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 10, 2003: High-Level CIA Report Notes Dissenting Views on Aluminum Tubes Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and dozens of senior White House officials receive a highly classified intelligence assessment, a Senior Executive Memorandum titled “Questions on Why Iraq Is Procuring Aluminum Tubes and What the IAEA Has Found to Date,” on the issue of the disputed use of the Iraqi aluminum tubes. The report concludes that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency all believe that the aluminum tubes were most likely intended for centrifuges. The memo says that only the intelligence units at the Departments of Energy and State, along with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), disagree with that assessment and believe the tubes were purchased to be used in Iraq’s conventional rocket program, and includes discussion of the dissenting opinions. [THE COMMISSION ON THE INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES OF THE UNITED STATES REGARDING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (AKA 'ROBB-SILBERMAN COMMISSION'), 3/31/2005; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 3/2/2006] Entity Tags: National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Energy, Condoleezza Rice, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, International Atomic Energy Agency, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Defense Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 15, 2003: US Officials Try to Persuade Blix, Delegates to Acquiesce to US Position on Iraq National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice flies to New York City to meet with Hans Blix. She attempts to discourage him from his plans to revert to the provisions of UN Resolution 1284 after his January 27 report to the UN Security Council—the last update required by UN Resolution 1441 (see November 8, 2002). She also attempts to persuade him to press ahead with plans to aggressively interview Iraqi scientists. [SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 1/16/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 1/16/2003] At a Council luncheon, US ambassador to the UN John Negroponte attempts to convince delegates of the other member states that the inspections timetable should not be based on the 1999 resolution. But they disagree, seeing no reason to ignore the process outlined in Resolution 1284. [REUTERS, 1/16/2003; REUTERS, 1/16/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 1/17/2003] A few days later, the London Observer reports, “US officials have made it clear that they will try to foil further reports and say that an accumulation of evidence of military activity in Iraq will be enough for Saddam to be in material breach of the orders to Saddam to disarm.” [OBSERVER, 1/19/2003] Entity Tags: Hans Blix, John Negroponte, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 19, 2003: Top Bush Officials Appear to Suggest that War with Iraq Might be Avoided Top Bush administration officials appear to suggest that war can be avoided if Saddam Hussein steps down. Donald Rumsfeld, speaking on ABC’s This Week says, “I… personally would recommend that some provision be made so that the senior leadership in that country and their families could be provided haven in some other country, and I think that that would be a fair trade to avoid a war.” He also says that if Saddam goes into exile he might be granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes. [THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, 1/19/2003] Similarly, Colin Powell says on CNN, “I think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off, and this whole situation would be resolved, if Saddam Hussein… his sons and the top leadership of the regime would leave.” [LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER, 1/19/2003] It is not clear, however, if Rumsfeld and Powell’s comments are sincere, or if they are just trying to appear as though they are providing Saddam Hussein with an alternative to military confrontation. Their comments are seemingly contradicted by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice who says on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I… think that it is unlikely that this man is going to come down in any other way than to be forced.” [WASHINGTON POST, 1/20/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 1/20/2003] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 23, 2003: New York Times Publishes Op-ed by Rice on Iraq The New York Times publishes an op-ed piece written by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, titled, “Why We Know Iraq is Lying,” in which she writes that “Iraq has filed a false declaration to the United Nations that amounts to a 12,200-page lie,” citing among other things its failure “to account for or explain Iraq’s efforts to get uranium from abroad.” She says that Iraq has reneged on its commitment to disarm itself of its alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Instead of full cooperation and transparency, Iraq has “a high-level political commitment to maintain and conceal its weapons,” she claims. Iraq is maintaining “institutions whose sole purpose is to thwart the work of the inspectors,” she adds, asserting that the country is not allowing inspectors “immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted access” to the “facilities and people” involved in its alleged weapons program. [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/23/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 25, 2003: Libby Presents Early Draft of Powell UN Speech to Several Top Officials Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, presents the latest draft of a paper that is meant to serve as a rebuttal to Iraq’s December 7 declaration (see February 5, 2003) to Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Michael Gerson, and Karen Hughes. The paper, written with the help of John Hannah, is supposed to serve as the basis for the speech Secretary of State Colin Powell will deliver to the UN Security Council on February 5 (see February 5, 2003). In his presentation, Libby says that intercepts and human intelligence reports indicate that Saddam Hussein has been attempting to conceal items. He doesn’t know what items are being hidden by the Iraqis, but he says it must be weapons of mass destruction. He also claims that Iraq has extensive ties to al-Qaeda, and cites the alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi Intelligence agent (see April 8, 2001) as one example. While Armitage is disappointed with Libby’s presentation, Wolfowitz and Rove seem impressed. Karen Hughes warns Libby not to stretch the facts. [BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 368; ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 175] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Gerson, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 29, 2003: Joseph Wilson Wants White House to Correct the Record with Regard to Uranium-from-Africa Allegation Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson attempts to contact the White House through his contacts in the State Department and Senate with the message that it needs to correct the record on Iraq, specifically the allegation Bush recently made that Iraq sought uranium from Africa (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Wilson had been sent to Niger nearly a year before by the CIA to investigate these claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Both he and the current US ambassador in Niger confirmed that the country’s uranium supplies were under the complete control of a French consortium and that it would have been impossible for Niger to divert uranium to Iraq. Wilson also tells his contacts about General Carlton W. Fulford Jr’s trip (see February 24, 2002) to Niger. On that trip the four-star Marine Corps general had similarly reported to Washington that the purported uranium deal was probably not true. [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 174] The White House refuses to communicate with Wilson. The only message he receives is one from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice saying that he can state his case in writing in a public forum. [TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 1/23/2007] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 30-February 4, 2003: Powell’s Team Compiles Information for Upcoming Presentation on Its Own Colin Powell’s chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, tasked with the duty of preparing Powell’s upcoming UN presentation (see January 29, 2003), meets with his hastily assembled team: Lynne Davidson, Powell’s chief speechwriter; Carl Ford, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR); and Barry Lowenkron, principal deputy director of policy planning at State. They also consult with a UN staffer on the logistics of making such a presentation to the Security Council. Later that day, Wilkerson drives to the CIA building in Langley, where he meets with CIA Director George Tenet and Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin. Wilkerson examines information provided for Powell’s speech by the White House, and quickly determines that it is unreliable to the point of uselessness (see January 30-February 4, 2003). He decides that his team will assemble its own information. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 276] INR Analysts Not Invited to Presentation Planning Sessions - Over the next few days, Wilkerson and his team works almost around the clock putting together Powell’s upcoming presentation. In addition to Wilkerson’s staff, McLaughlin and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are frequent participants. Others who take part include Rice’s deputy, Stephen Hadley; National Security Council officer Robert Joseph, who had ensured mention of the Iraq-Niger claim in President Bush’s recent State of the Union address (see January 26 or 27, 2003); another NSC official, Will Tobey; two of Vice President Cheney’s senior aides, John Hannah and Lewis “Scooter” Libby; and Lawrence Gershwin, one of the CIA’s top advisers on technical intelligence. Aside from Ford, there are no representatives from the State Department’s own intelligence analysts of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). They had refused to give in to White House pressure to “cook” the intelligence on Iraq (see November 14, 2001, January 31, 2002, March 1, 2002, and December 23, 2002). Their absence, author Craig Unger will later write, is “another striking indication that Powell had capitulated and was trying to avoid a showdown with the White House.… [T]he hard-nosed analysts at INR, who had not bowed to White House pressure, would be a political liability for Powell.” [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 6/9/2003; BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 370-1; VANITY FAIR, 5/2004, PP. 230; UNGER, 2007, PP. 276-278] Inspirational Film - Early in the process, Wilkerson and his colleagues watch an archived film of then-UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s historic 1962 speech before the UN Security Council. Stevenson’s ringing denunciation of the Soviet Union, and his dramatic use of irrefutable evidence that showed Soviet missiles in Cuba, inspires the team to seek what Wilkerson calls “a similar confluence of evidence and rhetoric.” They want Powell to have his own “Stevenson moment” before the UN. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 276-278] Roadblocks - Throughout the process, Wilkerson’s team is deviled by the insistence of White House representatives, most notably those from Cheney’s office, on the insertion of information and claims that Wilkerson and his team know are unreliable (see January 30-February 4, 2003). [UNGER, 2007, PP. 275] Entity Tags: John E. McLaughlin, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Central Intelligence Agency, Carl W. Ford, Jr., Bush administration, George J. Tenet, Barry Lowenkron, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, William H. Tobey, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, US Department of State, Lynne Davidson, United Nations, Robert G. Joseph, Craig Unger, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, National Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley, Lawrence Wilkerson, John Hannah, Lawrence Gershwin Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 31, 2003: US Conducts Covert Surveillance Against United Nations Delegates Frank Koza, chief of staff in the “Regional Targets” section of the National Security Agency, issues a secret memo to senior NSA officials that orders staff to conduct aggressive, covert surveillance against several United Nations Security Council members. This surveillance, which has the potential to wreak havoc on US relations with its fellow nations, is reportedly ordered by George W. Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Koza, whose section spies on countries considered strategically important to US interests, is trying to compile information on certain Security Council members in order to help the United States to win an upcoming UN resolution vote on whether to support military action against Iraq (see February 24, 2003. Targeted Nations Include 'Middle Six' - The targeted members are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea, and Pakistan, who together make up the so-called “Middle Six.” These six nations are officially “on the fence,” and their votes are being aggressively courted by both the pro-war faction, led by the US and Britain, and the anti-war faction, led by France, Russia and China (see Mid-February 2003-March 2003. [OBSERVER, 3/2/2003] Bulgaria is another nation targeted, and that operation will apparently be successful, because within days Bulgaria joined the US in supporting the Iraq war resolution. Mexico, another fence-straddler, is not targeted, but that may be because, in journalist Martin Bright’s words, “the Americans had other means of twisting the arms of the Mexicans.” (Bright is one of the authors of the original news report.) The surveillance program will backfire with at least one country, Chile, who has its own history of being victimized by US “dirty tricks” and CIA-led coups. Chile is almost certain to oppose the US resolution. [AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION, 3/6/2003] It is also likely, some experts believe, that China is an ultimate target of the spy operation, since the junior translater who will leak the Koza memo in February, Katharine Gun, is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and is unlikely to have seen the memo unless she would have been involved in translating it into that language. [ALTERNET, 2/18/2004] Operation Ruined US Chances of Winning Vote - Later assessment shows that many experts believe the spying operation scuttled any chance the US had of winning the UN vote, as well as the last-ditch attempt by the UN to find a compromise that would avert a US-British invasion of Iraq. [OBSERVER, 2/15/2004] Chile 'Surprised' to be Targeted - Chile’s ambassador to Britain, Mariano Fernandez, will say after learning of the NSA surveillance, “We cannot understand why the United States was spying on Chile. We were very surprised. Relations have been good with America since the time of George Bush, Sr.” [OBSERVER, 3/9/2003] Mexico Suspected Spying - Mexico’s UN representative, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, will tell the Observer a year later that he and other UN delegates believed at the time that they were being spied upon by the US during their meetings. “The surprising thing was the very rapid flow of information to the US quarters,” he will recall. “It was very obvious to the countries involved in the discussion on Iraq that we were being observed and that our communications were probably being tapped. The information was being gathered to benefit the United States.” [OBSERVER, 2/15/2004] Memo Comes Before Powell's UN Presentation - The memo comes just five days before Colin Powell’s extraordinary presentation to the UN to build a case for war against Iraq (see [complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_442]]), and is evidence of the US’s plans to do everything possible to influence the UN to vote to authorize war with that nation. The memo says the eavesdropping push “will probably peak” after Powell’s speech. [BALTIMORE SUN, 3/4/2003] NSA Wants Details of Voting Plans, More - The NSA wants information about how these countries’ delegations “will vote on any second resolution on Iraq, but also ‘policies’, ‘negotiating positions’, ‘alliances’ and ‘dependencies’—the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises.” [OBSERVER, 3/2/2003] Bright will tell other reporters on March 9, “It’s quite clear what they were going for was not only the voting patterns and the voting plans and the negotiations with other interested parties such as the French or the Chinese, it wasn’t just the bare bones, it was also the office telephone communications and email communications and also what are described as ‘domestic coms’, which is the home telephones of people working within the UN. This can only mean that they were looking for personal information. That is, information which could be used against those delagates. It’s even clear from the memo that this was an aggressive operation. It wasn’t simply a neutral surveillance operation.” According to Bright’s sources, the orders for the program came “from a level at least as high as Condoleezza Rice, who is the President’s National Security Adviser.” [AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION, 3/6/2003] 'Surge' of Covert Intelligence Gathering - Koza advises his fellow NSA officials that the agency is “mounting a surge” aimed at gaining covert information that will help the US in its negotiations. This information will be used for the US’s so-called Quick Response Capability (QRC), “against” the six delegations. In the memo, Koza writes that the staff should also monitor “existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms [office and home telephones] for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations,” suggesting that not only are the delegates to be monitored in their UN offices, but at their homes as well. Koza’s memo is copied to senior officials at an unnamed foreign intelligence agency (later revealed to be Britain). Koza addresses those officials: “We’d appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar more indirect access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines [intelligence sources].…I suspect that you’ll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels.” The surveillance is part of a comprehensive attempt by the US to influence other nations to vote to authorize a war against Iraq; these US attempts include proffers of economic and military aid, and threats that existing aid packages will be withdrawn. A European intelligence source says, The Americans are being very purposeful about this.” [NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, 1/31/2003; OBSERVER, 3/2/2003; OBSERVER, 2/8/2004] US Media Ignores Operation - While the European and other regional media have produced intensive coverage of the news of the NSA’s wiretapping of the UN, the American media virtually ignores the story until 2004, when Gun’s court case is scheduled to commence (see February 26, 2004). Bright, in an interview with an Australian news outlet, says on March 6 that “[i]t’s as well not to get too paranoid about these things and too conspiratorial,” he was scheduled for interviews by three major US television news outlets, NBC, Fox News, and CNN, who all “appeared very excited about the story to the extent of sending cars to my house to get me into the studio, and at the last minute, were told by their American desks to drop the story. I think they’ve got some questions to answer too.” [AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION, 3/6/2003] Most US print media outlets fail to cover the story, either. The New York Times, the self-described newspaper of record for the US, do not cover the story whatsoever. The Times’s deputy foreign editor, Alison Smale, says on March 5, “Well, it’s not that we haven’t been interested, [but] we could get no confirmation or comment” on the memo from US officials. “We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting.” The Washington Post publishes a single story about the operation, focusing on the idea that surveillance at the UN is business as usual. The Los Angeles Times fixes on claims by unnamed “former top intelligence officials” believe Koza’s memo is a forgery. (When the memo is proven to be authentic, both the Post and the Los Angeles Times refuse to print anything further on the story.) Author Norman Solomon writes, “In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo—and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the Observer team that exposed it—the most powerful US news outlets gave the revelation the media equivalent of a yawn. Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of US media concern about the NSA’s illicit spying, must have been very encouraged.” [ZNET, 12/28/2005] UN to Launch Inquiry - The United Nations will launch its own inquiry into the NSA surveillance operation (see March 9, 2003). Entity Tags: United Nations Security Council, Washington Post, NBC, New York Times, Martin Bright, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Alison Smale, Britain Mariano Fernández, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Fox News, Colin Powell, National Security Agency, Frank Koza Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 31, 2003: Bush Tells Blair US Going to War Regardless of Inspection Results; US Considering Luring Iraq into Shooting at US Aircraft Painted in UN Colors President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair meet at the White House to discuss Iraq. Also present at the meeting are Blair’s foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning; his aid Matthew Rycoft; his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell; US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Dan Fried; and Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card. [SANDS, 2005; INDEPENDENT, 2/2/2006; CHANNEL 4 NEWS (LONDON), 2/2/2006; NEW YORK TIMES, 3/27/2006] Bush Says US Going to War with or without UN Resolution - Blair presses Bush to seek a second UN resolution that would provide specific legal backing for the use of force against Iraq. According to the minutes of the meeting, Bush says that “the diplomatic strategy [has] to be arranged around the military planning” and that the “US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would ‘twist arms’ and ‘even threaten.’” But if such efforts fail, Bush is recorded saying, “military action would follow anyway.” Bush also tells Blair that he hopes to commence military action on March 10. Blair does not demur and offers Britain’s total support for the war, saying that he is “solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam.” Notwithstanding, he insists that “a second Security Council resolution would provide an insurance policy against the unexpected, and international cover, including with the Arabs.” According to Bush, the question that needs to be addressed is what should they cite as evidence that Iraq is in breach of its obligations under UN Resolution 1441 (see November 8, 2002). The minutes of the meeting will indicate that there is concern that inspections have failed to provide sufficient evidence of a material breach. Suggested Provocation of Iraq - “The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colors,” the minutes report. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.” [SANDS, 2005; CHANNEL 4 NEWS (LONDON), 2/2/2006; MSNBC, 2/2/2006; GUARDIAN, 2/3/2006; NEW YORK TIMES, 3/27/2006] The Times of London later notes that this proposal “would have made sense only if the spy plane was ordered to fly at an altitude within range of Iraqi missiles.” In this case, the plane would be far below the 90,000 foot altitude it is capable of operating at. [LONDON TIMES, 2/2/2006; CHANNEL 4 NEWS (LONDON), 2/2/2006] Bush Suggests Use of Defector - In addition to the U2 idea, Bush says it is “possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam’s WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated.” At one point during the two-hour meeting, Bush says he thinks “it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” [SANDS, 2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 3/27/2006] Author Phillippe Sands will later ask, “Why would the US president and the British prime minister spend any time concocting ways of proposing a material breach if they knew they could prove Saddam had weapons of mass destruction?” [RICH, 2006, PP. 190] Entity Tags: David Manning, George W. Bush, Jonathan Powell, Daniel Fried, Tony Blair, Andrew Card, Condoleezza Rice, Phillippe Sands, Matthew Rycroft Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

February 1, 2003-February 4, 2003: Powell Refuses to Include Certain Material in His Speech Linking Iraq to Islamic Militants On February 1, Secretary of State Colin Powell begins rehearsing for his February 5 presentation to the UN Security Council (see February 5, 2003). Powell is assisted by members of his staff, including his chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see January 30-February 4, 2003). [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 6/9/2003; BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 368-9; GENTLEMEN'S QUARTERLY, 4/29/2004] Discredited Items Keep Reappearing - One item that keeps reoccurring is the discredited claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague (see September 14, 2001 and September 18, 2001). Cheney’s people keep attempting to insert it into the presentation. It takes Powell’s personal intervention to have the claim removed from the presentation. “He was trying to get rid of everything that didn’t have a credible intelligence community-based source,” Wilkerson will later recall. But even after Powell’s decision, Cheney loyalist Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, tries to have it reinserted. “They were just relentless,” Wilkerson will recall. “You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness.” An official (probably Wilkerson) later adds: “We cut it and somehow it got back in. And the secretary said, ‘I thought I cut this?’ And Steve Hadley looked around and said, ‘My fault, Mr. Secretary, I put it back in.’ ‘Well, cut it, permanently!’ yelled Powell. It was all cartoon. The specious connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, much of which I subsequently found came probably from the INC and from their sources, defectors and so forth, [regarding the] training in Iraq for terrorists.… No question in my mind that some of the sources that we were using were probably Israeli intelligence. That was one thing that was rarely revealed to us—if it was a foreign source.” Powell becomes so angry at the machinations that he throws the dossier into the air and snaps: “This is bullsh_t. I’m not doing this.” But he continues working on the presentation. [US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 6/9/2003; BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 370-1; VANITY FAIR, 5/2004, PP. 230; UNGER, 2007, PP. 278-279] The same official will add that every time Powell balks at using a particular item, he is “fought by the vice president’s office in the person of Scooter Libby, by the National Security Adviser [Condoleezza Rice] herself, by her deputy [Stephen Hadley], and sometimes by the intelligence people—George [Tenet] and [Deputy CIA Director] John [McLaughlin].” [BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 370] Mobile Bioweapons Claim Survives Editing Process - One of the allegations Powell rehearses is the claim that Iraq has developed mobile biological weapons laboratories, a claim based on sources that US intelligence knows are of questionable reliability (see Late January, 2003 and February 4, 2003). Referring to one of the sources, an Iraqi major, Powell later tells the Los Angeles Times, “What really made me not pleased was they had put out a burn [fabricator] notice on this guy, and people who were even present at my briefings knew it.” Nor does anyone inform Powell that another source, an Iraqi defector known as Curveball, is also a suspected fabricator (see January 27, 2003). [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11/20/2005] In fact, the CIA issued an official “burn notice” formally retracting more than 100 intelligence reports based on Curveball’s information. [ABC NEWS, 3/13/2007] Powell 'Angry, Disappointed' in Poor Sourcing of Claim - In March 2007, Powell will claim he is “angry and disappointed” that he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source. “I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed.” But former CIA chief of European operations Tyler Drumheller will later claim in a book that he tried and failed to keep the Curveball information out of the Powell speech (see February 4-5, 2003). “People died because of this,” he will say. “All off this one little guy who all he wanted to do was stay in Germany.” Drumheller will say he personally redacted all references to Curveball material in an advance draft of the Powell speech. “We said, ‘This is from Curveball. Don’t use this.’” But Powell later says neither he nor his chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, were ever told of any doubts about Curveball. “In fact, it was the exact opposite,” Wilkerson will assert. “Never from anyone did we even hear the word ‘Curveball,’ let alone any expression of doubt in what Secretary Powell was presenting with regard to the biological labs.” [ABC NEWS, 3/13/2007] Entity Tags: White House Iraq Group, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Lawrence Wilkerson, John E. McLaughlin, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage, Colin Powell, Stephen J. Hadley Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda

February 5, 2003: Rice Says She Is Sure that Iraq Is Linked to Al-Qaeda When asked on CNN if there is a clear connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, National Security Adviser Rice replies: “There is no question in my mind about the al-Qaeda connection. It is a connection that has unfolded, that we’re learning more about as we are able to take the testimony of detainees, people who were high up in the al-Qaeda organization. And what emerges is a picture of a Saddam Hussein who became impressed with what al-Qaeda did after it bombed our embassies in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania, began to give them assistance in chemical and biological weapons, something that they were having trouble achieving on their own, that harbored a terrorist network under this man [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein was told that al-Zarqawi was there.” [CNN, 2/5/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

February 9, 2003: Washington Post: Bush Administration in Near-Perfect Accord with Likud-Run Israeli Government The governments of Israel and the United States are in almost-perfect accord on most issues, according to a Washington Post analysis. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has talked repeatedly of the “special closeness” he has to the Bush administration, and of the “deep understanding” that President Bush and his officials have for Israel’s security and foreign policy needs. He has thanked Bush for providing what he calls “the required leeway in our ongoing war on terrorism” and lauded the Bush administration’s efforts to promote a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinian people. Thomas Neumann, who heads the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), agrees. “This is the best administration for Israel since Harry Truman,” says Neumann, equating Bush with the first American president to recognize the independent state of Israel. A senior official in the first Bush administration says that Sharon used the 9/11 attacks to cement the bond between his government and the Bush administration. One senior administration official says: “Sharon played the president like a violin: ‘I’m fighting your war, terrorism is terrorism,’ and so on. Sharon did a masterful job.” Accord with Likud - But the US is not just in accord with Israel; it is in accord with Likud, the hardline conservative political party currently in charge of the Israeli government. The Post writes: “For the first time, a US administration and a Likud government in Israel are pursuing nearly identical policies. Earlier US administrations, from Jimmy Carter’s through Bill Clinton’s, held Likud and Sharon at arm’s length, distancing the United States from Likud’s traditionally tough approach to the Palestinians. But today, as Neumann noted, Israel and the United States share a common view on terrorism, peace with the Palestinians, war with Iraq and more. Neumann and others said this change was made possible by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath.” Bush supporters, particularly evangelical Christians, are “delight[ed]” with the administration’s overt support of Likud policies. Abandoning Peace Talks between Israel and Palestinians - The downside, the Post notes, is that diplomacy with Israel’s Arab neighbors has come to a virtual standstill, and the Middle East “peace process” praised by Sharon is considered by many past and current US officials as a failure. Clinton administration National Security Adviser Sandy Berger says: “Every president since at least Nixon has seen the Arab-Israeli conflict as the central strategic issue in the Middle East. But this administration sees Iraq as the central challenge, and… has disengaged from any serious effort to confront the Arab-Israeli problem.” Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, the administration’s special envoy to the region, calls the peace process “quiescent,” and adds, “I’ve kind of gone dormant.” 'Likudniks Really in Charge Now' - Bush has appointed neoconservative Elliott Abrams, a vociferous critic of any peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, the head of Mideast affairs for the National Security Council, signaling his administration’s near-total alignment with Israel in the process. Abrams’s hardline views are supported by, among others, Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, Abrams’s mentor, who in 1996 recommended to Israel’s then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he abandon the Oslo peace accords and refuse to accede to Palestinian demands of “land for peace” (see September 13, 1993). A senior administration official says wryly, “The Likudniks are really in charge now,” using a Yiddish term for supporters of Sharon’s political party. “It’s a strong lineup,” says Neumann. Fellow neoconservative Meyrav Wurmser of the Hudson Institute says of Abrams: “Elliott’s appointment is a signal that the hard-liners in the administration are playing a more central role in shaping policy.… [T]he hard-liners are a very unique group. The hawks in the administration are in fact people who are the biggest advocates of democracy and freedom in the Middle East.” The Post explains that in Abrams’s and Wurmser’s view, promoting democracy in the Middle East is the best way to assure Israel’s security. Like other neoconservatives, they see the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of a “democratic Palestine” as necessary for peace in the region. Others who disagree with the neoconservatives call them a “cabal.” The Post writes, “Members of the group do not hide their friendships and connections, or their loyalty to strong positions in support of Israel and Likud.” [WASHINGTON POST, 2/9/2003] Entity Tags: Elliott Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush administration, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Anthony Zinni, Thomas Neumann, Sandy Berger, Likud, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Harry S. Truman, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Perle, Meyrav Wurmser, National Security Council Timeline Tags: US International Relations

Between February 10, 2003 and February 16, 2003: CIA Director Briefs National Security Adviser about Italian Rendition CIA Director George Tenet briefs National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on the forthcoming rendition of al-Qaeda figure Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from Italy to Egypt (see Noon February 17, 2003). According to a senior CIA officer who GQ magazine will say is “directly involved,” Rice approves the mission, but worries how she will tell President Bush. [GQ, 3/2007 ] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

February 16, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Alleges Iraqi Government Is Allowing Al-Qaeda to Operate in Iraq Asked for concrete evidence that Hussein has links to al-Qaeda, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice points to the presence of operatives allegedly being hosted in Iraq. “Well, we are, of course, continually learning more about these links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and there is evidence that Secretary [of State Colin] Powell did not have the time to talk about. But the core of the story is there in what Secretary Powell talked about. This poisons network with at least two dozen of its operatives operating in Baghdad, a man [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] who is spreading poisons now throughout Europe and into Russia, a man who got medical care in Baghdad despite the fact that the Iraqis were asked to turn him over, training in biological and chemical weapons.” [FOX NEWS SUNDAY, 2/16/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

March 9, 2003: UN Investigates NSA Wiretapping of Security Council Delegates The United Nations launches an investigation into the electronic and physical surveillance of a number of its Security Council delegates by the National Security Agency (see January 31, 2003). The NSA operation, revealed the week before, was apparently leaked to Britain’s Observer by Katharine Gun, who works at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and has been arrested on suspicion of breaking Britain’s Official Secrets Act (see February 2003). The NSA also solicited the assistance of an intelligence agency of an unnamed “friendly foreign government”; it is believed to be Britain. The leak is touted as “more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers” by celebrated whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The leak of the NSA surveillance program has caused deep embarrassment for the Bush administration, which is working to recruit supporters for a second UN resolution authorizing military force against Iraq (see February 24, 2003). The authorization for the NSA operation is believed to have come from National Security Adviser Rice, but US intelligence experts say that such a decision would have had to involve Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, and NSA Director Michael Hayden. President Bush, by necessity, would have been informed of the proposed operation at one of his daily intelligence briefings. While such surveillance of foreign diplomats at the UN is legal under the US’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), it violates the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. According to international law expert Dr. John Quigley, the Vienna Convention stipulates: “The receiving state shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes…. The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable.” [OBSERVER, 3/9/2003] Entity Tags: United Nations Security Council, United Nations, National Security Agency, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Michael Hayden, John Quigley, Condoleezza Rice, Katherine Gun, Donald Rumsfeld, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, George W. Bush, Government Communications Headquarters, George J. Tenet, Daniel Ellsberg Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

March 9, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Suggests Hussein Could Work with Al-Qaeda to Attack US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice goes on to speculate on CBS Face the Nation that Hussein may eventually decide to “enlist” al-Qaeda to attack the United States. “Now the al-Qaeda is an organization that’s quite disbursed and—and quite widespread in its effects, but it clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists. And what we do not want is the day when Saddam Hussein decides that he’s had enough of dealing with sanctions, enough of dealing with, quote, unquote, ‘containment,’ enough of dealing with America, and it’s time to end it on his terms, by transferring one of these weapons, just a little vial of something, to a terrorist for blackmail or for worse.” [FACE THE NATION, 3/9/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

March 19, 2003: NSC Counterterrorism Director Resigns over Diversion of Resources Away from War on Terror to Iraq Rand Beers, the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, resigns from his post. Administration sources say Beers is resigning for personal reasons, but intelligence sources say Beers’s resignation is triggered by his concern that the administration’s looming war with Iraq is drawing critically needed resources away from the war on terror (see February 2003). “Hardly a surprise,” says one former intelligence official. “We have sacrificed a war on terror for a war with Iraq. I don’t blame Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread thought that the war on terror is being set aside for the war with Iraq at the expense of our military and intel resources and the relationships with our allies.” A Senate Intelligence Committee staffer adds, “Randy said that he was ‘just tired’ and did not have an interest in adding the stress that would come with a war with Iraq.” Beers’s supervisor, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, asked Beers twice during his exit interview if his resignation was a protest against the war with Iraq. Beers told her that it was not. Author and intelligence expert James Bamford says, “This is a very intriguing decision” for Beers to resign. “There is a predominant belief in the intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq will cause more terrorism than it will prevent. There is also a tremendous amount of embarrassment by intelligence professionals that there have been so many lies out of the administration—by the president, [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [Secretary of State Colin] Powell—over Iraq” (see January 24, 2008). One administration official says: “If it was your job to prevent terror attacks, would you be happy about an action that many see as unnecessary, that is almost guaranteed to cause more terror in the short-term? I know I’m not [happy].” [UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 3/19/2003] Beers, who will soon join the presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry as a foreign policy adviser, will tell an interviewer in late 2006 that “I’m sorry to say that the reason that I resigned from the National Security Council staff and the government has turned out to be true, and that is that I was concerned then, and we see now, that our entry into Iraq, the way in which we entered with a small, rather than a large, coalition, without UN approval, without Arab support, has ended up making Iraq a recruiting poster for al-Qaeda. It has made our job more difficult around the world.” [DEMOCRACY NOW!, 10/4/2006] Entity Tags: James Bamford, Rand Beers, National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan

April 4, 2003: Rice Says Iraq Will Be Handed over to Iraqis ‘As Quickly As Possible’ National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells reporters, “We will leave Iraq completely in the hands of Iraqis as quickly as possible.” [WHITE HOUSE, 4/4/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

May 2003: Vice President Cheney Begins Inquiring about Wilson’s Trip to Niger Vice President Dick Cheney’s interest in former ambassador and current Iraq whistleblower Joseph Wilson is renewed when Wilson informs New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that he was the special envoy who went to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the uranium claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). When Kristof publishes the information (see May 6, 2003), according to a CIA official, “a request came in from Cheney that was passed to me that said ‘the vice president wants to know whether Joe Wilson went to Niger.’ I’m paraphrasing. But that’s more or less what I was asked to find out.” Cheney, of course, knew Wilson had gone to Niger (see (February 13, 2002)). The campaign to discredit and besmirch Wilson begins again (see March 9, 2003 and After), this time in a much more intensified manner. “Cheney and Libby made it clear that Wilson had to be shut down,” the CIA official will later say. “This wasn’t just about protecting the credibility of the White House. For the vice president, going after Wilson was purely personal, in my opinion.” Cheney is heavily involved in this second phase of the anti-Wilson campaign as well, pushing CIA officials to find out everything they can about Wilson. Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley also pressures State Department officials to send information they have on Wilson to his attention at the NSC. It is also at this time that Cheney and at least some members of his staff learn that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is a covert CIA officer. At least one meeting is held in the Office of the Vice President to discuss possible strategies to use against Wilson. According to a State Department official, Cheney is not at this particular meeting: “Libby [Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby] led the meeting. But he was just as upset about Wilson as Cheney was.” [USA TODAY, 4/29/2004; TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 2/9/2006] In a 2005 interview, Wilson will tell a reporter that he believes others in the White House’s communications and public relation staffs, including Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, and James Wilkinson, all become aware of Plame Wilson’s secret CIA status, as does Hadley, his boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and White House chief of staff Andrew Card. “That would be the natural group because they were constituted to spin the war, so they would be naturally the ones to try to deflect criticism,” Wilson will say. [RAW STORY, 7/13/2005] In 2008, current White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will acknowledge that “Cheney and his staff were leading a White House effort to discredit Joe Wilson himself.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171] Entity Tags: Office of the Vice President, Karen Hughes, Joseph C. Wilson, James R. Wilkinson, Condoleezza Rice, Central Intelligence Agency, Andrew Card, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Nicholas Kristof, US Department of State, Valerie Plame Wilson, Scott McClellan, Mary Matalin, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Stephen J. Hadley Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

(May 2003-May 2004): President Bush Informed of Red Cross Concerns over Prisoner Treatment According to a unnamed aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, at “various times throughout this period,” Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld relay the Red Cross’ concerns about the Coalition’s treatment of prisoners directly to President Bush. [BALTIMORE SUN, 5/12/2004] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

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May 4, 2003: US Immediately Rejects Comprehensive Peace Proposal by Iran’s Top Leadership

Sadegh Kharrazi. [Source: University of Cambridge] In the wake of the US-led conquest of Iraq, the government of Iran worries that they will be targeted for US invasion next. Sadegh Kharrazi, Iran’s ambassador to France and the nephew of Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, drafts a bold proposal to negotiate with the US on all the outstanding conflicts between them. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 5/21/2006] Diplomats refer to the proposal as “the grand bargain.” The US sends neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior National Security Council official, to talk with Iran’s UN ambassador, Javad Zarif. [VANITY FAIR, 3/2007] The proposal was reviewed and approved by Iran’s top leaders Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mohammad Khatami, and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi. Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador to Iran, is used as an intermediary since the US and Iran do not have formal diplomatic relations. [WASHINGTON POST, 2/14/2007] According to the language of the proposal, it offers “decisive action against any terrorists (above all, al-Qaeda) in Iranian territory” and “full cooperation and exchange of all relevant information.” In return, Iran wants “pursuit of anti-Iranian terrorists, above all [the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK)],” a dissident Iranian group which the US officially lists as a terrorist organization. Iran also offers to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for “full access to peaceful nuclear technology.” It proposes “full transparency for security [assurance] that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD” and “full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols).” That is a references to IAEA protocols that would guarantee the IAEA access to any declared or undeclared facility on short notice. The proposal also offers a dramatic change in Iranian policy towards Israel. Iran would accept an Arab league declaration approving a land-for-peace principle and a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel’s withdrawal to 1967 lines, a softening of Iran’s usual policy. The proposal further offers to stop any Iranian support of Palestinian opposition groups such as Hamas and proposes to convert Hezbollah into “a mere political organization within Lebanon.” It further offers “coordination of Iranian influence for activity supporting political stabilization and the establishment of democratic institutions and a nonreligious government” in Iraq. In return, Iran wants a democratic government in Iran, which would mean its Shiite allies would come to power since the Shiites make up a majority of the Iraqi population. The proposal wants the US to remove Iran from its “axis of evil” and list of terrorism sponsors. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 5/21/2006] US Rejects Offer - The US flatly rejects the idea. “We’re not interested in any grand bargain,” says Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. [VANITY FAIR, 3/2007] The American Prospect will later comment that “Iran’s historic proposal for a broad diplomatic agreement should have prompted high-level discussions over the details of an American response.” State Department counterterrorism expert Flynt Leverett will later call it a “respectable effort” to start negotiations with the US. But within days, the US rejects the proposal without even holding an interagency meeting to discuss its possible merits. Guldimann, the Swiss intermediary, is reprimanded for having passed the proposal to the US. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 5/21/2006] Larry Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, will later say that it was a significant proposal for beginning “meaningful talks” between the US and Iran but that it “was a non-starter so long as [Dick] Cheney was Vice President and the principal influence on Bush.” [NEWSWEEK, 2/8/2007] He will also say that the State Department supported the offer, “[b]ut as soon as it got to the Vice President’s office, the old mantra of ‘We don’t talk to evil‘… reasserted itself” and Cheney’s office turned the offer down. [BBC, 1/18/2007] Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage will later claim that, “We couldn’t determine what was the Iranians’ and what was the Swiss ambassador’s,” and says that he though the Iranians “were trying to put too much on the table.” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will say of the proposal, “Perhaps somebody saw something of the like” but “I just don’t remember ever seeing any such thing.” [NEWSWEEK, 2/8/2007] Colin Powell will later say that President Bush simply didn’t want to negotiate with an Iranian government that he believed should not be in power. “My position… was that we ought to find ways to restart talks with Iran… But there was a reluctance on the part of the president to do that.” He also says, “You can’t negotiate when you tell the other side, ‘Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start.’” [NEWSWEEK, 2/12/2007] Days later, Iran will propose a more limited exchange of al-Qaeda prisoners for MEK prisoners, but the US will reject that too (see Mid-May 2003). Author Craig Unger will later write, “The grand bargain was dead. Flush with a false sense of victory, Bush, Cheney, and [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld felt no need to negotiate with the enormous oil-rich country that shared a border with the country America had just invaded.” [UNGER, 2007, PP. 308-309] Proposal Echoed Four Years Later - In 2007, the BBC will note, “Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.” [BBC, 1/18/2007] Entity Tags: Kamal Kharrazi, Lawrence Wilkerson, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Mujahedeen-e Khalq, Richard Armitage, International Atomic Energy Agency, Hojjat ol-Eslam Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, Flynt Leverett, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, Hezbollah, Condoleezza Rice, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Donald Rumsfeld, Tim Guldimann, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Complete 911 Timeline

May 23, 2003: Paul Bremer Dissolves Iraqi Army Paul Bremer, head of the Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, issues Order 2 formally dissolving the Iraqi Army and other vestiges of the old Ba’athist state. [CNN, 5/23/2003; COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY, 5/23/2003] The order, drafted by Douglas Feith’s office in the Pentagon and approved by the White House, triggers mass protests among the estimated 300,000 to 500,000 former Iraqi soldiers who are left without a job and who are given only a small, one-time, $20 emergency payment. [NEW YORK TIMES, 5/24/2003; AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 5/26/2003; ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 225] Together with the de-Ba’athification program, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army leads to some 500,000 people losing their source of income. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 6/5/2003] Criticism - The action will be highly criticized as a major blunder of the war. The decision was made by Walter Slocombe, a security adviser to Bremer, who proclaims that “We don’t pay armies we defeated.” A colonel on Jay Garner’s staff (see January 2003) will later say: “My Iraqi friends tell me that this decision was what really spurred the nationalists to join the infant insurgency. We had advertised ourselves as liberators and turned on these people without so much as a second thought.” [ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 12/2005] Garner's Reaction - Garner himself will later speak on the subject, telling a Vanity Fair reporter: “My plan was to not disband the Iraqi Army but to keep the majority of it and use them. And the reason for that is we needed them, because, number one, there were never enough people there for security. [A US military commander told him the US Army was guarding a lot of places it had not planned to guard.] So we said, OK, we’ll bring the Army back. Our plan was to bring back about 250,000 of them. And I briefed [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld. He agreed. [Deputy Defense Secretary] Wolfowitz agreed. [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice agreed. [CIA Director] George [Tenet] agreed. Briefed the president on it. He agreed. Everybody agreed. So when that decision [to disband] was made, I was stunned.” Iraqi Colonel's Reaction - US and UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer will later say of the decision: “One Iraqi colonel told me, ‘You know, our planning before the war was that we assumed that you guys couldn’t take casualties, and that was obviously wrong.’ I looked at him and said, ‘What makes you think that was wrong?’ He goes, ‘Well, if you didn’t want to take casualties, you would have never made that decision about the Army.’” [VANITY FAIR, 2/2009] Entity Tags: Jay Garner, George W. Bush, Scott Wallace, Paul Wolfowitz, Walter Slocombe, George J. Tenet, Douglas Feith, L. Paul Bremer, Condoleezza Rice, Charles Duelfer, Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

May 28, 2003: Rice Says US Has Found Biological Weapons Labs in Iraq In a press briefing prior to the president’s trip to Europe and the Middle East, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice suggests the US military has discovered laboratories capable of developing weapons of mass destruction, supporting Powell’s claim (see February 5, 2003). “We have found, in Iraq, biological weapons laboratories that look precisely like what Secretary Powell described in his February 5 report to the United Nations.” [WHITE HOUSE, 5/28/2003; US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 5/28/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

Summer 2003: CIA Officials Obtain Permission from Rice to Use Harsh Interrogation Tactics on New Detainee CIA officials ask for reauthorization of the controversial harsh interrogation methods (see Spring 2002 and Beyond and August 1, 2002) that had been withdrawn (see December 2003-June 2004) after the revelation of abuse and torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison (see November 5, 2003). The CIA has captured a new al-Qaeda suspect in Asia, and top agency officials ask the National Security Council Principals Committee—Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft—for permission to use extreme methods of interrogation against the new detainee. Rice, who chairs the Principals Committee, says: “This is your baby. Go do it.” [ABC NEWS, 4/9/2008] The name of the new suspect captured in Asia is not mentioned, but Hambali is captured in Thailand in August 2003 (see August 12, 2003), and he is the only prominent al-Qaeda figure arrested that summer. He is considered one of al-Qaeda’s most important leaders. There are some reports that he is one of only about four prisoners directly waterboarded by the US (see Shortly After August 12, 2003). Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George J. Tenet, John Ashcroft, Hambali, National Security Council, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline

June 3, 2003: Rice Says Discovered Trailers Were Made to Produce Biological Weapons Speaking on CNBC’s Capital Report, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says the trailers recently discovered in Iraq (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) were designed to produce biological weapons. “But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5 (see February 5, 2003) talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that—dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described… We know that these trailers look exactly like what was described to us by multiple sources as the capabilities for building or for making biological agents. We know that we have from multiple sources who told us that then and sources who have confirmed it now. Now the Iraqis were not stupid about this. They were able to conceal a lot. They’ve been able to scrub things down. But I think when the whole picture comes out, we will see that this was an active program.” [CNBC, 6/3/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

June 8, 2003: Rice Says US Will Find WMDs in Iraq National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, says: “We are confident that we—I believe that we will find [weapons of mass destruction in Iraq]. I think that we have already found important clues like the biological weapons laboratories that look surprisingly like what Colin Powell described in his speech (see February 5, 2003).” [MEET THE PRESS, 6/8/2003; AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE, 6/9/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

June 8, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Defends Prewar Allegations Concerning Iraq’s Alleged WMD Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Condoleezza Rice defends the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence. For example, she tells host George Stephanopoulos, “Already, we’ve discovered… trailers… that look remarkably similar to what Colin Powell described in his February 5 speech (see February 5, 2003).” [THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, 6/8/2003; AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE, 6/9/2003] Asked why the Africa-uranium claim was included in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) even though it had been debunked by the CIA several months earlier (see October 6, 2002), Rice claims the administration had “other sources” which supported the claim that Hussein was determined to obtain uranium from somewhere in Africa. “At the time that the State of the Union address was prepared, there were also other sources that said that they were, the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake, uranium oxide from Africa.” [THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, 6/8/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] When Stephanopoulos notes that there were several people in the US government who doubted the Africa-uranium claim, Rice responds, “The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that this, that there was serious questions about this report.” [THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, 6/8/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/26/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, George Stephanopoulos Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 8, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Denies that Top Administration Officials Knew Niger Documents Had Been Forged Commenting on the recent revelation (see May 6, 2003) that former diplomat Joseph Wilson’s 2002 trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) had determined that Iraq did not conclude a deal with Niger to supply it with uranium, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says during an appearance on “Meet the Press,” “Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.” [WASHINGTON POST, 6/13/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/13/2003; ABC NEWS, 6/16/2003] Upon learning of Rice’s comments, an infuriated Wilson sends a message to Rice that if she will not correct her statement, he will (see June 9, 2003-July 6, 2003). Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 9, 2003-July 6, 2003: Joseph Wilson Indicates He Wants Corrrection of Incorrect Statements by Rice Former ambassador Joseph Wilson is infuriated by Condoleezza Rice’s June 9 claim (see June 8, 2003) that top officials were unaware of doubts over the Niger uranium claim. He contacts friends in the government and asks them to pass on the message that if Rice does not correct the record, he will (see May 29, 2003). [VANITY FAIR, 5/2004, PP. 282] One of the people Wilson contacts is State Department official Marc Grossman (see June 10, 2003 and 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), who will later describe Wilson as “really mad” over Rice’s comments. Wilson tells Grossman that he is considering “going public.” [MARCY WHEELER, 1/24/2007] Wilson, according to his wife Valerie Plame Wilson, is so outraged at Rice’s assertions that they become “the final straw for Joe. He was angry that his government was lying.” [WILSON, 2007, PP. 138] He calls David Shipley, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, who offers him 1,500 words to tell his story (see July 6, 2003). Wilson will later write of Rice: “How does somebody whose job it is to track nuclear weapons developments, especially in rogue states, receive such critical information and then proceed to forget it? This was not a grade school homework assignment. The short answer is that they don’t forget it, unless they are derelict. Regrettably, disingenuousness is another possibility. Condoleezza Rice may be many things, but she is hardly derelict.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 331-332] Entity Tags: David Shipley, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Condoleezza Rice, Marc Grossman Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 13, 2003: Columnist Contradicts Rice’s, Cheney’s Disavowal of Knowledge of Iraq-Niger Forgeries New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof contradicts National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s recent statement that no one in the White House ever suspected that the documents “proving” Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger were forged (see May 6, 2003). Rice recently said, “Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery” (see June 8, 2003). Kristof also notes that the White House claims Vice President Cheney learned of its own role in using the forged documents as “evidence” of the Iraq-Niger claim from reading Kristof’s May 6 column in the Times. Using information from what he calls “two people directly involved and three others who were briefed on” the story, Kristof writes that the truth is quite different from what Rice and Cheney say. He writes, “while Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may not have told [President] Bush that the Niger documents were forged, lower CIA officials did tell both the vice president’s office and National Security Council staff members. Moreover, I hear from another source that the CIA’s operations side and its counterterrorism center undertook their own investigations of the documents, poking around in Italy and Africa, and also concluded that they were false—a judgment that filtered to the top of the CIA” (see January 28-29, 2003 and March 23, 2003). Kristof also notes that “the State Department’s intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, independently came to the exact same conclusion about those documents, according to Greg Thielmann, a former official there. Mr. Thielmann said he was ‘quite confident’ that the conclusion had been passed up to the top of the State Department.” Kristof also quotes former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, who says, “It was well known throughout the intelligence community that it was a forgery.” Kristof adds that Tenet and the US intelligence communities “were under intense pressure to come up with evidence against Iraq.” As a result, “[a]mbiguities were lost, and doubters were discouraged from speaking up.” A former military intelligence officer says: “It was a foregone conclusion that every photo of a trailer truck would be a ‘mobile bioweapons lab’ and every tanker truck would be ‘filled with weaponized anthrax.’ None of the analysts in military uniform had the option to debate the vice president, secretary of defense, and the secretary of state.” Kristof concludes: “I don’t believe that the president deliberately lied to the public in an attempt to scare Americans into supporting his war. But it does look as if ideologues in the administration deceived themselves about Iraq’s nuclear programs—and then deceived the American public as well.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 6/13/2003] Entity Tags: New York Times, Bush administration, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Kristof, George J. Tenet, Greg Thielmann, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Melvin A. Goodman Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 24, 2003: Human Rights Organizations Ask Rice for Access to Iraqi Detention Facilities Executive directors of human rights groups write to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asking that the US provide human rights monitors access to US prisoners and detention facilities in Iraq to verify conditions of detention. [HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 5/7/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

June 25, 2003: Senator Asks Condoleezza Rice for Clarification about Detainee Abuse Stories Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) writes to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asking for “clarification about numerous stories concerning alleged mistreatment of enemy combatants in US custody” and requesting that she explain how the administration ensures that detainees rendered to other countries are not tortured. [HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 5/7/2004] Unbeknownst to Specter, Rice signed off on using torture methods on prisoners over a year earlier (see Mid-May, 2002). Entity Tags: Arlen Specter, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

July 6-7, 2003: White House Press Secretary Admits Nigerien Uranium Claims ‘Incorrect’ According to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer’s deputy and imminent successor Scott McClellan, “Armed with updated talking points from the vice president’s office… Fleischer dispute[s] the notion that Cheney and others in the administration must have known about [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson’s findings” (see March 5, 2002). Fleischer denies that Vice President Dick Cheney asked for someone to go to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from there (see (February 13, 2002)), and denies Cheney’s awareness of the mission until it was reported. However, Fleischer “inadvertently drop[s] a small bombshell,” according to McClellan. He tells reporters, “Now we’ve long acknowledged—and this is old news, we’ve said it repeatedly—that the information on [Nigeran uranium] did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.” McClellan will later acknowledge that the admission is anything but “old news,” and will write: “But Fleischer now appeared to suggest for the first time that the president’s 16 words in the State of the Union address had been based primarily on the Niger documents (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Up until that point, the White House had maintained that the president’s language had been deliberately broad so as to include African countries other than Niger” (see January 28-29, 2003). Reporters “jump[ed] all over the story,” McClellan will recall. “Admitting that something the president had said was wrong was big news, and it would need to be discussed among senior advisers and approved by the president.” McClellan will note, “Throughout the day, there was much discussion among the president’s advisers on whether or not to acknowledge the obvious.” According to McClellan, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is one of the strongest advocates for making the admission, and “her point of view prevail[s].” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 168-169] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Ari Fleischer, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Office of the Vice President, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003: Rove: White House Needs to Emphasize that Cheney Did Not Send Wilson to Niger During the morning meeting for senior White House officials, political strategist Karl Rove tells the assemblage that the White House needs to “get the message out” about war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003). Rove emphasizes the need to push the point that Wilson was not sent to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney (see July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, and July 7-8, 2003). At the meeting are Cheney, President Bush, Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and chief of staff Andrew Card, who will soon take over the administration’s response to the Iraq-Niger controversy (see (July 11, 2003)). [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 3/5/2004 ] Libby brings an underlined copy of Wilson’s July 6 New York Times op-ed to the meeting. [OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, 7/7/2003] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Andrew Card, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Joseph C. Wilson, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 11, 2003: Rice Claims Neither Bush, Cheney, Nor Herself Were Informed of Dissents Regarding Iraq’s Aluminum Tubes When asked about the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) and whether Bush knew of the dissenting views among US intelligence agencies regarding the now-infamous aluminum tubes supposedly being used by Iraq to produce nuclear weapons, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice says that in preparation for his February 2003 speech to the UN (see February 5, 2003), Secretary of State Colin Powell chose to “caveat,” or mention, the dissents. “The only thing that was there in the NIE was a kind of a standard INR footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE. That’s the only thing that’s there. And you have footnotes all the time in CIA—I mean, in NIEs. So if there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the president was unaware of that concern and as was I.… Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me.” Rice is incorrect. The President’s Summary from that NIE (see Early October 2002) specifically told Bush of the dissenting views, and the much lengthier NIE went into far more detail about the dissenting views. Rice, along with Vice President Cheney and other senior White House officials, received a memo months before giving them the same material, including the dissents (see January 10, 2003). (Cheney, as a matter of course, receives essentially the same intelligence information as Bush receives.) And the NIE itself contained the following caveat: “In [the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR]‘s view, Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets.” This passage, among other sections of the NIE, will be declassified on July 18, one week from Rice’s denials. A Pattern of Deception - There are numerous examples of Bush and Cheney citing the “imminent threat” of Saddam Hussein against the US and the Middle East. Some of those include: Cheney’s assertion that Hussein “now has weapons of mass destruction [and] is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us” (see August 26, 2002); Bush’s assertion to the UN that Iraq has WMDs and is likely to share them with terrorists (see September 12, 2002); a farrago of assertions from Bush that includes assertions about Iraq’s fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles ready to disperse chemical and biological weapons, perhaps over the US, its consorting with al-Qaeda, and more (see October 7, 2002); a State of the Union address loaded with false, misleading, and incorrect allegations (see October 7, 2002); and a speech on the eve of the Iraq invasion that asserted “[t]he danger is clear” that Iraq will “kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent” Americans (see March 17, 2003). [WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 3/2/2006] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, US Department of Energy, Colin Powell, Al-Qaeda, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

July 11, 2003: President Bush Blames CIA Director Tenet for Niger Forgery Mention in State of the Union Speech While President Bush is in Uganda, a reporter asks him, “Why—can you explain how an erroneous piece of intelligence on the Iraq-Niger connection got into your State of the Union speech? Are you upset about it? And should somebody be held accountable, sir?” Bush replies, “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services…” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice responds more specifically a short time later, “I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said ‘take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone, without question,” Instead, after some changes sought by the CIA were made, “the agency cleared the speech and cleared it in its entirety.” Later in the day, CIA Director George Tenet accepts blame for allowing the allegations into the January 2003 speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), saying the information “did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed” (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). [WASHINGTON POST, 7/12/2003] Reporter Steve Coll will later comment, “I don’t know what George Tenet felt as he saw that unfold, but I can imagine that he was dismayed and increasingly resentful that he was being singled out for blame. At the same time, he’s such an operator and such a student of Washington that surely, he understood what was happening, that he was being asked, in effect, to fall on his shield so that the president could be reelected.” [PBS FRONTLINE, 6/20/2006] Entity Tags: Steve Coll, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 11, 2003: Rice Insists Yellowcake Claims Reasonable In the morning press gaggle on Air Force One during a presidential trip to Africa, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice persists in asserting there is an underlying truth to the Niger documents even though they have been proven to be a forgery. “And there were other attempts to, to get yellow cake from Africa,” she says. Rice also says she knew nothing of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger to investigate rumors about Iraq’s attempts to secure uranium from that nation (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Rice tells reporters: “… I will tell you that, for instance, on Ambassador Wilson’s going out to Niger, I learned of that when I was sitting on whatever TV show it was, because that mission was not known to anybody in the White House. And you should ask the Agency at what level it was known in the Agency.” She says that unidentified television show took place “about a month ago.” [WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] The report on Wilson’s trip was disseminated throughout the upper echelons of the White House in early March 2002 (see March 8, 2002). As National Security Adviser, it is unlikely Rice did not see the report. Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003: CIA Officially Retracts Uranium-from-Africa Claim Referring to President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), CIA Director George Tenet says in a written statement: “I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.… These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” Tenet denies that the White House is responsible for the mistake, putting the blame squarely on himself and his agency. His statement comes hours after Bush blamed the CIA for the words making it into the speech (see July 11, 2003). [CNN, 7/11/2003; CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 7/11/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/12/2003] CIA Chose to Send Wilson to Niger - Tenet also confirms that it was the CIA’s choice to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), apparently in an effort to rebut claims that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the mission. Tenet states: “There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam’s efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA’s counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region [Wilson] to make a visit to see what he could learn.” Tenet says that Wilson found no evidence to believe that Iraq had attempted to purchase Nigerien uranium, though this did not settle the issue for either the CIA or the White House. [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 7/11/2003] Coordinated with White House - Tenet’s admission was coordinated by White House advisers for what reporter Murray Waas will call “maximum effect.” Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, White House political strategist Karl Rove, and Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby had reviewed drafts of Tenet’s statement days in advance; Hadley and Rove had suggested changes in the draft. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 3/30/2006] Cheney rejected an earlier draft, marking it “unacceptable” (see July 11, 2003). White House Joins in Blaming CIA - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also blames the CIA. Peppered with questions from reporters about the claim, she continues the White House attempt to pin the blame for the faulty intelligence on the CIA: “We have a higher standard for what we put in presidential speeches” than other governments or other agencies. “We don’t make the president his own fact witness. That’s why we send them out for clearance.” Had the CIA expressed doubts about the Niger claim before the State of the Union? she is asked (see January 26 or 27, 2003, March 8, 2003, March 23, 2003, April 5, 2003, Early June 2003, June 9, 2003, and June 17, 2003). “The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,” she replies. “If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,’ (see January 27, 2003) it would have been gone without question. If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me.… What we’ve said subsequently is, knowing what we know now, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn’t have put this in the president’s speech—but that’s knowing what we know now.” Another senior White House official, defending the president and his advisers, tells ABC News: “We were very careful with what the president said. We vetted the information at the highest levels.” But another intelligence official, also interviewed by ABC, contradicts this statement. [CNN, 7/11/2003; WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/12/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/12/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 99; MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171-172] Tenet’s mea culpa is apparently enough for Bush; press secretary Ari Fleischer says, “The president has moved on.” [WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 99] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later claim that at this point Rice is unaware that her National Security Council is far more responsible for the inclusion than the CIA. He will write that the news media reports “not unfairly” that Rice is blaming the CIA for the inclusion. [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171-172] News Reports Reveal Warnings Not to Use Claim - Following Tenet’s statement, a barrage of news reports citing unnamed CIA officials reveal that the White House had in fact been explicitly warned not to include the Africa-uranium claim. These reports indicate that at the time Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it had been widely understood in US intelligence circles that the claim had little evidence supporting it. [BOSTON GLOBE, 3/16/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 3/23/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/12/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/12/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/12/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/13/2003; ABC NEWS, 6/16/2003; NEWSDAY, 7/12/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/20/2003] For example, CBS News reports, “CIA officials warned members of the president’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.” And a Washington Post article cites an unnamed intelligence source who says, “We consulted about the paper [September 2002 British dossier] and recommended against using that material.” [CBS NEWS, 7/10/2003; CNN, 7/10/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/11/2003] Claim 'Technically True' since British, Not US, Actually Made It - White House officials respond that the dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion, “Iraq has… sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” and that the officials had argued that as long as the statement was attributed to the British intelligence, it would be technically true. Similarly, ABC News reports: “A CIA official has an idea about how the Niger information got into the president’s speech. He said he is not sure the sentence was ever cleared by the agency, but said he heard speechwriters wanted it included, so they attributed it to the British.” The same version of events is told to the New York Times by a senior administration official, who claims, “The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials.” [ABC NEWS, 6/12/2003; CBS NEWS, 7/10/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/14/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/19/2003] Decision Influenced by Office of Special Plans - But according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are investigating the issue, the decision to include the Africa-uranium claim was influenced by the people associated with the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, 7/16/2003] Reactions - Rice says that the White House will not declassify the October 2002 NIE on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) to allow the public to judge for itself whether the administration exaggerated the Iraq-Niger claim; McClellan will write that Rice is currently “unaware of the fact that President Bush had already agreed to ‘selective declassification’ of parts of the NIE so that Vice President Cheney, or his top aide Scooter Libby, could use them to make the administration’s case with selected reporters” (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171-172] Two days later, Rice will join Bush in placing the blame for using the Iraq-Niger claim solely on the CIA (see July 13, 2003). McClellan will later write, “The squabbling would leave the self-protective CIA lying in wait to exact revenge against the White House.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 172] Former Ambassador Considers Matter Settled - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims during his fact-finding trip to Niger (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at Tenet’s admission. According to his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, “Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point.” [WILSON, 2007, PP. 140] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Murray Waas, Valerie Plame Wilson, ABC News, Stephen J. Hadley, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Scott McClellan, CBS News, Office of Special Plans Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 13, 2003: Condoleeza Rice Again Blames CIA for Uranium-from-Africa Claim The White House continues to back away from its admission of error concerning President Bush’s claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see July 8, 2003 and July 11, 2003). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appear on the Sunday morning talk shows to assert that the “16 words” in Bush’s January speech (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) were “technically correct” because British intelligence, not American intelligence, was the original source of the claim as worded by Bush. The British still stand by the claim, though they refuse to provide evidence. In the interviews, Rice tries to call the claim a “mistake” and simultaneously vouch for its “accuracy.” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/26/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 100] “I believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” she says. In particular, Fox News host Tony Snow gives Rice multiple opportunities to state that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, and that the Iraq-Niger uranium claim is probably true. She says that the related claim of the Iraqis buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges is also supported by the CIA, even though Snow acknowledges that the tubes theory has been “knocked down.” [FOX NEWS, 7/13/2003] Invoking the British, Blaming Tenet - On CBS’s Face the Nation, Rice again blames CIA Director George Tenet for the error (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), saying: “My only point is that, in retrospect, knowing that some of the documents underneath may have been—were, indeed, forgeries, and knowing that apparently there were concerns swirling around about this, had we known that at the time, we would not have put it in.… And had there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the director of central intelligence did not want it in, it would have been gone.” [CBS NEWS, 7/13/2003] On Fox News, Rice says: “[T]he statement that [Bush] made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate. And the British themselves stand by that statement to this very day, saying that they had sources other than sources that have now been called into question to back up that claim. We have no reason not to believe them.… We have every reason to believe that the British services are quite reliable.” [FOX NEWS, 7/13/2003] On CNN, Rice calls the issue “enormously overblown.… This 16 words has been taken out of context. It’s been blown out of proportion.” She emphasizes that Bush’s claim came “from a whole host of sources.… The British, by the way, still stand by their report to this very day in its accuracy, because they tell us that they had sources that were not compromised in any way by later, in March or April, later reports that there were some forgeries.” She adds: “We’re talking about a sentence, a data point, not the president’s case about reconstitution of weapons of mass destruction, or of nuclear weapons in Iraq.… We’re talking about a single sentence, the consequence of which was not to send America to war. The consequence of which was to state in the State of the Union something that, while accurate, did not meet the standard that we use for the president.” [CNN, 7/13/2003] Denies Involvement in Wilson Mission - Rice also denies that anyone at the White House had any involvement in sending former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the uranium claims (see July 6, 2003). CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer says of the Wilson mission, “Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president.” Rice replies: “No, this is simply not true, and this is something that’s been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out. The vice president did not ask that Joe Wilson go to Niger. The vice president did not know. I don’t think he knew who Joe Wilson was, and he certainly didn’t know that he was going. The first that I heard of Joe Wilson mission was when I was doing a Sunday talk show and heard about it (see June 8, 2003 and June 8, 2003)… [T]he Wilson trip was not sent by anyone at a high level. It wasn’t briefed to anyone at high level. And it appears to have been inconclusive in what it found.” Rice is following the White House strategy of denying Vice President Dick Cheney’s involvement in the Wilson mission (see July 6, 2003, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, and July 8, 2003). [CNN, 7/13/2003] Entity Tags: Wolf Blitzer, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Tony Snow, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Joseph C. Wilson, Donald Rumsfeld, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 16, 2003: Intelligence Professionals: Bush Must Ask Cheney to Resign An organization called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writes an open letter to President Bush entitled “Intelligence Unglued,” where they warn that unless Bush takes immediate action, the US intelligence community “will fall apart—with grave consequences for the nation.” They say that it is clear his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and not CIA Director George Tenet, was responsible for the now-infamous “sixteen words” in his January State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). “But the disingenuousness persists,” they write. “Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June 8, 2003, about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger in February 2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job” (see July 6, 2003). “Rice’s denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into buildings (see May 16, 2002). In September, the joint Congressional committee on 9/11 came up with a dozen such reports” (see December 24, 1994 and January 6, 1995). It is not only Rice’s credibility that has suffered, they write, but Secretary of State Colin Powell’s as well, “as continued non-discoveries of weapons in Iraq heap doubt on his confident assertions to the UN” (see February 5, 2003). Ultimately, they write, it is Bush’s credibility at stake much more than that of his advisers and cabinet members. They lay the blame for the “disingenuousness” from the various members of the administration at the feet of Vice President Dick Cheney: it was Cheney’s office who sent Wilson to Niger (see (February 13, 2002)), it was Cheney who told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that Saddam Hussein was about to produce a nuclear weapon (see August 26, 2002), all with intelligence he and his staff knew to be either unreliable or outright forgeries—a “deep insult to the integrity of the intelligence process,” they write—it was Cheney and his staff who pressured CIA analysts to produce “cherry-picked” intelligence supporting their desire for war, it was Cheney and his staff who “cooked” the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002). Bad enough that false intelligence was used to help craft Bush’s State of the Union address, they write, but that “pales in significance in comparison with how it was used to deceive Congress into voting on October 11 to authorize you to make war on Iraq” (see October 10, 2002). VIPS recommends three things for Bush to implement: Bring an immediate end to White House attempts to exculpate Cheney from what they write is his obvious guilt and ask for his resignation: “His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.” Appoint General Brent Scowcroft, the chair of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, to head “an independent investigation into the use/abuse of intelligence on Iraq.” Bring UN inspectors back into Iraq. “This would go a long way toward refurbishing your credibility. Equally important, it would help sort out the lessons learned for the intelligence community and be an invaluable help to an investigation of the kind we have suggested you direct Gen. Scowcroft to lead.” [SALON, 7/16/2003] Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 21, 2003: George Bush and Condoleezza Rice Meet with Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi at Bush’s Ranch President George Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. [ABC NEWS, 7/21/2003; US PRESIDENT, 7/28/2003] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Silvio Berlusconi Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 21, 2003: Hadley Offers to Resign Over ‘16 Words’ Controversy; White House Staffers Decide to Approach Issue with ‘Forthrightness,’ ‘Honesty’ White House chief of staff Andrew Card (see (July 11, 2003)) holds a late-night meeting of what press secretary Scott McClellan will call “select senior advisers”—Card, McClellan, communications director Dan Bartlett, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Rice’s deputy Stephen Hadley, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Gonzales’s subordinate Harriet Miers. One topic of discussion is the recent report that the White House had scrubbed a claim of an Iraq-Niger uranium buy from a speech by President Bush in October 2002 (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002), months before Bush’s State of the Union address where he did make such a claim (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). The media reports that Hadley was warned to delete the claim by CIA Director George Tenet. Hadley confirms receiving the warning, and tells the assemblage that, three months later, he had forgotten Tenet’s warning. “Signing off on these facts is my responsibility,” he says. “And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign.” Hadley is distressed that Tenet had, in McClellan’s words, “been made to look like the scapegoat, since he believed it was nobody’s fault but his own.” McClellan will call Hadley’s offer to resign “selfless .. [his attempt to] clear the name of someone he felt had taken an unfair degree of blame, and to accept his own responsibility for an honest mistake whose consequences were now playing out before a worldwide audience.” The others quickly reject Hadley’s proffered resignation, and decide, as McClellan will recall, “that an approach of openness, forthrightness, and honesty was now essential.” Bartlett and Hadley are delegated to “inform the world as to what had happened and why,” and Hadley will admit to having forgotten his conversation with Tenet” (see October 6, 2002). [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 177-178] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Alberto R. Gonzales, Andrew Card, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Dan Bartlett, Harriet Miers, Scott McClellan, George J. Tenet Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 29, 2003: David Kay Tells Top US Officials That Iraq Survey Group Has Yet to Find Evidence of WMD; Bush Unfazed In a briefing to the president and other top officials, Kay says that he has found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and says the disputed trailers (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were probably not mobile biological factories, as the CIA and White House had claimed (see May 28, 2003 and May 29, 2003). Present at the briefing are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Card, and other White House aides. Kay’s briefing provokes little response from his audience. Describing the president’s reaction, Kay later says: “I’m not sure I’ve spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive. He was interested but not pressing any questions. .. I cannot stress too much that the president was the one in the room who was the least unhappy and the least disappointed about the lack of WMDs. I came out of the Oval Office uncertain as to how to read the president. Here was an individual who was oblivious to the problems created by the failure to find WMDs. Or was this an individual who was completely at peace with himself on the decision to go to war, who didn’t question that, and who was totally focused on the here and now of what was to come?” [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 310] Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Andrew Card, David Kay, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

July 30, 2003: Rice Says Iraq Was Trying to Reconstitute Nuclear Weapons Program, Possessed Other WMD before Invasion National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asserts that the intelligence community is convinced Saddam Hussein had been trying to reconstitute a nuclear weapon’s program. “Going into the war against Iraq, we had very strong intelligence,” Rice says. “I’ve been in this business for 20 years. And some of the strongest intelligence cases that I’ve seen, key judgments by our intelligence community that Saddam Hussein could have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, if left unchecked… that he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program.” Answering questions as to why no evidence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons has yet been found, Rice says: “What we knew going into the war was that this man was a threat. He had weapons of mass destruction. He had used them before. He was continuing to try to improve his weapons programs. He was sitting astride one of the most volatile regions in the world, a region out of which the ideologies of hatred had come that led people to slam airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington. Something had to be done about that threat and the president to simply allow this brutal dictator, with dangerous weapons, to continue to destabilize the Middle East.” [ZDF GERMAN TELEVISION, 7/31/2003; TALON NEWS, 8/1/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004; CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY, 1/23/2008] The day before, UN weapons inspector David Kay reported that no evidence of Iraqi WMD had been unearthed (see July 29, 2003). Rice was at that briefing. Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Saddam Hussein, David Kay Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

July 30, 2003: Rice Touts Aluminum Tubes as Proof of Iraq WMD Program National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice offers the discovery of aluminum tubes as proof of Hussein’s intentions to develop nuclear weapons on PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: “[H]e had… an active procurement network to procure items, many of which, by the way, were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group. There’s a reason that they were on the prohibited list of the nuclear supplies group: magnets, balancing machines, yes, aluminum tubes, about which the consensus view was that they were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.” [NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER, 7/30/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

July 30, 2003: Rice Admits to Responsibility in Not Vetting Iraq-Uranium Claims

Condoleezza Rice being interviewed by Gwen Ifill. [Source: PBS] After CIA Director George Tenet admits that President Bush should never have made the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admits the White House also erred in allowing the claim (see July 22, 2003), Hadley’s boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, grudgingly admits to her own responsibility in allowing the claim to be made. She tells PBS reporter Gwen Ifill: “What we learned later, and I did not know at the time, and certainly did not know until just before Steve Hadley went out to say what he said last week, was that the director [Tenet] had also sent over to the White House a set of clearance comments that explained why he wanted this out of the speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). I either didn’t see the memo, or I don’t remember seeing the memo.” When Ifill asks if she feels any “personal failure or responsibility” over allowing the false claim, Rice responds: “Well, I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode. The president of the United States has every right to believe that what he is saying in his speeches is of [sic] the highest confidence of his staff.” On the same day, Rice continues to insist that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program (see July 30, 2003, July 30, 2003, and July 31, 2003). [WILSON, 2004, PP. 352-353] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Gwen Ifill, George W. Bush, George J. Tenet Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 31, 2003: Rice Says Evidence of Iraqi WMDs ‘Very Strong’ Defending the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells ZDF television that there was “very strong intelligence” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction “Going into the war against Iraq, we had very strong intelligence. I’ve been in this business for 20 years. And some of the strongest intelligence cases that I’ve seen, key judgments by our intelligence community that Saddam Hussein… had biological and chemical weapons….” [ZDF GERMAN TELEVISION, 7/31/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

August 2003: US, North Korea Engage in Second Round of Profitless Negotiations The US takes part in another round of multilateral negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program (see April 2003). The US has failed to destabilize the North Korean government, and the North Koreans have been unsuccessful in luring the US into bilateral talks. Instead, both sides agree to “six-way” talks that include Japan, China, Russia, and South Korea. Heavy Restrictions on US Negotiators - US chief negotiator Jim Kelly is finally permitted to meet one-on-one with his North Korean counterpart Li Gun—for only 20 minutes, and only in the presence of the other delegates. This time, Kelly is allowed to chat briefly with Li in a corner. Kelly is also forbidden from making any offers or even suggesting the possibility of direct negotiations. Kelly’s fellow negotiator, Charles Pritchard, will later recall that Kelly was told to start the chat with Li by saying: “This is not a negotiating session. This is not an official meeting.” Foreign affairs journalist Fred Kaplan will later write: “For the previous year-and-a-half, the State Department had favored a diplomatic solution to the Korea crisis while the Pentagon and key players in the [National Security Council] opposed it. The August meeting in Beijing was Bush’s idea of a compromise—a middle path that constituted no path at all. He let Kelly talk, but didn’t let him say anything meaningful; he went to the table but put nothing on it.” But even this level of negotiation is too much for some administration hawks. During the meetings in Beijing, Undersecretary of State John Bolton gives a speech in Washington where he calls North Korea “a hellish nightmare” and Kim Jong Il “a tyrannical dictator.” Kaplan will observe, “True enough, but not the sort of invective that senior officials generally issue on the eve of a diplomatic session.” An exasperated Pritchard resigns in protest from the administration. He will later say: “My position was the State Department’s envoy for North Korean negotiations, yet we were prohibited from having negotiations. I asked myself, ‘What am I doing in government?’” Pritchard had also learned that White House and Pentagon officials did not want him involved in the talks, dismissing him as “the Clinton guy.” (Pritchard had helped successfully negotiate earlier agreements with the North Koreans during the Clinton administration.) [WASHINGTON MONTHLY, 5/2004] A Chinese diplomat says, “The American policy towards DRPK [North Korea]—this is the main problem we are facing.” [SCOBLIC, 2008, PP. 241] Cheney Source of Restrictions - According to Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the restrictions on Kelly come directly from Vice President Cheney. “A script would be drafted for Jim, what he could say and what he could not say, with points elucidated in the margins,” Wilkerson will later explain. The process involves President Bush, Cheney, Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers. On at least two occasions, Cheney rewrites the script for Kelly without consulting with the other principals, even Bush. According to Wilkerson, Cheney “put handcuffs on our negotiator, so he could say little more than ‘welcome and good-bye.’” In the words of authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein, Cheney’s “negotiating position was that there would be no negotiations.” [DUBOSE AND BERNSTEIN, 2006, PP. 185-186] Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, US Department of State, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard B. Myers, Lou Dubose, Fred Kaplan, George W. Bush, Jake Bernstein, Jim Kelly, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Charles Pritchard, Clinton administration, National Security Council, John R. Bolton, Li Gun, Lawrence Wilkerson, Kim Jong Il Timeline Tags: US International Relations

August 3, 2003: Wilson Discusses Iraq-Niger Claims on CNN Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador to Gabon who has played a key part in discrediting the Bush administration’s attempts to claim that Iraq tried to purchase weapons-grade uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003)), discusses the issue with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Wilson affirms that he has always believed Iraq had chemical and biological WMD, but not enough to warrant invading it, and adds that he “disagreed with… the other agendas that were in play that led us to invade, conquer, and now occupy Iraq.” He notes that he accepts the assertions that neither Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, nor CIA Director George Tenet were aware of his 2002 mission to Niger at the time he made the trip (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), but adds that he believes Cheney and his staffers, particularly his chief of staff Lewis Libby, “asked essentially that… the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President (see (February 13, 2002)). The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.” Wilson refuses to comment on his wife Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), particularly her CIA status, but does say that the attacks on both himself and his wife were “clearly designed to keep others from stepping forward. If you recall, there were any number of analysts who were quoted anonymously as saying that the vice president had seemed to pressure them in his many trips out to the CIA (see 2002-Early 2003). I don’t know if that’s true or not, but you can be sure that a GS-14 or 15 with a couple of kids in college, when he sees the allegations that came from senior administration officials about my family are in the public domain, you can be sure that he’s going to be worried about what might happen if he were to step forward.” The people who leaked the information about his wife, Wilson continues, “are libel or vulnerable to investigation under a 1982 law dealing with the identification of American agents.” He is referring to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (see July 16, 2003). [CNN, 8/3/2003] Entity Tags: Office of the Vice President, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, George J. Tenet, Joseph C. Wilson, Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Valerie Plame Wilson, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Wolf Blitzer Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

August 25, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Says US Needs to Transform Middle East in Order to Stop Terrorist Attacks National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says in a speech, “The transformation of the Middle East is the only guarantee that it will no longer produce ideologies of hatred that lead men to fly airplanes into buildings in New York or Washington.” She adds, “Transformation in the Middle East will require a commitment of many years.” [WHITE HOUSE, 8/25/2003] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

September 2003: 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Lunches with National Security Adviser Rice and Her Staff Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, goes to the White House to have lunch with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her staff. Zelikow is close to Rice and defends her interests on the Commission (see 1995, Before December 18, 2003, and May-June 2004). Zelikow’s White House passes are arranged by Karen Heitkotter, an executive secretary on the Commission. According to author Philip Shenon, during the Commission’s life, “More than once she [is] asked to arrange a gate pass so Zelikow [can] enter the White House to visit the national security adviser in her offices in the West Wing.” Allegedly, at the same time, “Zelikow [is] telling people how upset he [is] to cut off contact with his good friend Rice.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 107] Entity Tags: Karen Heitkotter, 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

September 7, 2003: Rice Is ‘Absolutely’ Convinced There Was Link Between Al-Qaeda and Iraqi Government National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says there is “absolutely” a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda “[W]e know that there was training of al-Qaeda in chemical and perhaps biological warfare. We know that [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi was networked out of there, this poisons network that was trying to spread poisons throughout…. And there was an Ansar al-Islam, which appears also to try to be operating in Iraq. So yes, the al-Qaeda link was there.” [FOX NEWS SUNDAY, 9/7/2003; GLOBAL VIEWS, 9/26/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 8, 2003: Bremer Announces Plan for Iraqi Governance in Washington Post Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer is under pressure to explain how he intends to transfer power in Iraq from the CPA and the hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC—see July 13, 2003), especially in light of Bremer’s recent, unilateral cancellation of national elections (see June 28, 2003). Bremer chooses an unusual venue to respond: the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. In a column entitled “Iraq’s Path to Sovereignty,” Bremer writes that national elections are “simply… not possible” at this time. Instead, the IGC will develop a plan for drafting and ratifying a new constitution. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/8/2003; ROBERTS, 2008, PP. 129-130] This will be followed by elections and, finally, complete transfer of the CPA’s powers to the new Iraqi government. Bremer gives no hint of a timetable, and implies that the process will not end quickly. Influential Iraqis, and US allies such as France and Germany, are disturbed by the prospect of an essentially indefinite occupation. Senior Bush officials, particularly National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, will later claim to have been blindsided by Bremer’s plan. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a conservative with excellent sources within the White House, will later write that Bremer “hadn’t cleared the [Post] piece with his higher-ups in the Pentagon or the White House” (see December 2003 and After). However, Bremer’s column is consistent with a Bush statement on Iraqi governance the day before, and with the text of a resolution the administration will try to push through the UN Security Council in October. It is unclear what, if any, authorization Bremer has for his decision, but there are manifest disagreements in the top ranks of White House officials as to the wisdom of Bremer’s planning (see November 15, 2003). [ROBERTS, 2008, PP. 129-130] Entity Tags: United Nations Security Council, Coalition Provisional Authority, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, David Brooks, Iraqi Governing Council, L. Paul Bremer, Washington Post Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

September 14, 2003-September 17, 2003: Cheney Links Iraq to 9/11; Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice All Disavow Cheney’s Claim Vice President Cheney says on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I think it’s not surprising that people make [the] connection” between Iraq and 9/11. He adds, “If we’re successful in Iraq… then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of The Base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.” [MEET THE PRESS, 9/14/2003] However, two days later, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld states that he hasn’t “seen any indication that would lead” him to believe there was an Iraq-9/11 link. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/16/2003] National Security Adviser Rice says the administration has never accused Hussein of directing the 9/11 attacks. [REUTERS, 9/16/2003] The next day, Bush also disavows the Cheney statement, stating, “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th… [but] there’s no question that Saddam Hussein has al-Qaeda ties.” [CBS NEWS, 9/17/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 9/18/2003] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 22, 2003 and After: Bush Does Not Read News, Relies on Briefings from Two Advisers In an interview with Fox News’s Brit Hume, President Bush admits that he does not read news articles himself. Instead, he gets briefings from staff members. “I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi [Rice] in the morning. They come in and tell me.… I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read [sic] the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.” It has been his “[p]ractice since day one,” he says. His Staffers Best Source for 'Objective' News - “You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there’s opinions mixed in with news. And I… I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.” [FOX NEWS, 9/22/2003] 'Filtered or Unfiltered' - The reaction from the media is quite critical. Slate’s Michael Kinsley writes: “To President Bush, the news is like a cigarette. You can get it filtered or unfiltered.… When he is trying to send a message to the public, Bush prefers to have it go out unfiltered. But when he is on the receiving end, Bush prefers his news heavily filtered.… George W. Bush doesn’t really want people to get the news unfiltered. He wants people to get the news filtered by George W. Bush. Or rather, he wants everyone to get the news filtered by the same people who apparently filter it for him. It’s an interesting epistemological question how our president knows what he thinks he knows and why he thinks it is less distorted than what the rest of us know or think we know. Every president lives in a cocoon of advisers who filter reality for him, but it’s stunning that this president actually seems to prefer getting his take on reality that way.” [SLATE, 10/16/2003] 'Sugar Coating' the News - Washington institution Helen Thomas, a long-time critic of the Bush administration, writes: “Bush is spoon-fed the relevant news from his staff. Top aides usually know the buttons not to push when it comes to bad news. More often they will tell the president what he wants to hear—the good news if there is any. Or they may just sugar coat the news that is tougher to swallow.” [HEARST NEWSPAPERS, 10/15/2003] Entity Tags: Brit Hume, Andrew Card, Fox News, George W. Bush, Michael Kinsley, Helen Thomas, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

September 26, 2003: FBI Begins Criminal Investigation into Plame Wilson Identity Leak The Justice Department authorizes the FBI to open a criminal investigation into leaks of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert identity by sources within the Bush administration (see July 14, 2003, July 30, 2003, and September 16, 2003). [MSNBC, 2/21/2007; WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] The investigation is headed by the Justice Department’s counterespionage chief, John Dion. [VANITY FAIR, 1/2004] Questions of Impartiality - Dion is a veteran career prosecutor who has headed the counterespionage section since 2002. He will rely on a team of a half-dozen investigators, many of whom have extensive experience in investigating leaks. However, some administration critics are skeptical of Dion’s ability to run an impartial investigation: he will report to the Justice Department’s Robert McCallum, who is an old friend and Yale classmate of President Bush. Both Bush and McCallum were members of the secret Skull & Bones Society at Yale. Others believe the investigation will be non-partisan. “I believe that the career lawyers in Justice—the people who preceded [Attorney General] John Ashcroft and who will be there after he leaves—will do a nonpolitical investigation, an honest investigation,” says legal ethics specialist Stephen Gillers. “Ashcroft’s sole job is to stay out of it.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10/2/2003; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/2/2003] CIA Director Filed Request - The request for an investigation (see September 16, 2003) was filed by CIA Director George Tenet; a CIA official says Tenet “doesn’t like leaks.” White House press secretary Scott McClellan says he knows of no leaks about Wilson’s wife: “That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing. I don’t have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice.” McClellan calls Joseph Wilson’s charges that deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove leaked his wife’s name (see August 21, 2003) “a ridiculous suggestion” that is “simply not true.” A White House official says that two administration sources (later revealed to be Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage—see June 13, 2003, July 8, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003) leaked Plame Wilson’s name to six separate journalists (see Before July 14, 2003). The White House is notoriously intolerant of leaks, and pursues real and supposed leakers with vigor. Wilson says that if the White House did indeed leak his wife’s name, then the leak was part of what he calls “a deliberate attempt on the part of the White House to intimidate others and make them think twice about coming forward.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/28/2003] White House, Democrats Respond - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says that the White House is willing to have the Justice Department investigate the charges. “I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate,” she tells Fox News. “My understanding is that in matters like this, a question like this is referred to the Justice Department for appropriate action and that’s what is going to be done.” However, some Democrats want more. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate the charges, since the department has an inherent conflict of interest: “I don’t see how it would be possible for the Justice Department to investigate whether a top administration official broke the law and endangered the life of this agent (see July 21, 2003). Even if the department were to do a thorough and comprehensive investigation, the appearance of a conflict could well mar its conclusions.… Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network of intelligence assets. On top of that, it poses a serious threat to the national security of this nation.” Representative Richard Gephardt (D-MO) says the White House should find out who is responsible for the leak, and Congress should investigate the matter as well. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/28/2003; FOX NEWS, 9/29/2003] FBI Will Acknowledge Investigation - The FBI officially acknowledges the investigation on September 30 (see September 30, 2003), and informs the White House of the investigation. [NEW YORK TIMES, 2006] Entity Tags: Richard Gephardt, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Stephen Gillers, US Department of Justice, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Scott McClellan, John Dion, Robert McCallum, George W. Bush, Charles Schumer, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, George J. Tenet, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Ashcroft Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 28, 2003: Condoleezza Rice Links Iraq to Al-Qaeda Again Appearing on Meet the Press, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice presumes to link Hussein to Osama bin Laden. “Saddam Hussein—no one has said that there is evidence that Saddam Hussein directed or controlled 9/11, but let’s be very clear, he had ties to al-Qaeda, he had al-Qaeda operatives who had operated out of Baghdad.” [MSNBC, 9/28/2003; US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, 3/16/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

Late September, 2003: Rice Forms Oversight Group to Keep Tabs on Bremer National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, frustrated with Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer’s lack of cooperation and coordination with her office (see September 8, 2003 and December 2003 and After), forms the Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG) to oversee Bremer and settle disputes between the Defense and State Departments in governing Iraq. [ROBERTS, 2008, PP. 130] According to unnamed White House officials, the ISG originated with President Bush’s frustration at the lack of progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “The president knows his legacy, and maybe his re-election, depends on getting this right,” says an administration official. “This is as close as anyone will come to acknowledging that it’s not working.” Defense Department officials deny that the ISG is designed to take power away from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “Don recognizes this is not what the Pentagon does best, and he is, in some ways, relieved to give up some of the authority here,” says one senior Pentagon official. In reality, both Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are giving up some control over the reconstruction efforts to the White House, specifically to the National Security Council. Rice will oversee four coordinating committees, on counterterrorism efforts, economic development, political affairs in Iraq and media messaging. One of her deputies will run each committee, assisted by undersecretaries from State, Defense, and the Treasury Department, as well as representatives from the CIA. The counterterrorism committee will be run by Frances Fragos Townsend; the economic committee by Gary Edson; the political affairs committee by Robert Blackwill; and the communications committee by Anna Perez. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/6/2003] In May 2004, the Washington Post will report that the ISG is dysfunctional and ineffective almost from the outset; within months, all but Blackwill have been reassigned (Perez will leave Washington for a job with NBC), and a search of the White House Web site will find no mention of the ISG later than October 2003. [WASHINGTON POST, 5/18/2004] Entity Tags: Iraq Stabilization Group, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Coalition Provisional Authority, Anna Perez, Frances Townsend, George W. Bush, US Department of Defense, US Department of State, Robert Blackwill, National Security Council, L. Paul Bremer, US Department of the Treasury, Gary Edson Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

October 16, 2003: Kennedy Lambasts Bush Administration’s ‘Lie after Lie after Lie’ on Rationale for Invading Iraq

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) speaking to the US Senate. [Source: Life magazine] Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), a longtime critic of the Bush administration’s push for war with Iraq, delivers a blistering rebuke from the floor of the US Senate to President Bush and the White House over what he calls “lie after lie after lie” it has given to the American people to justify the Iraq invasion. Kennedy calls the war “unnecessary… based on unreliable and inaccurate intelligence,” and notes that the US occupation of Iraq “has not brought an end to danger. Instead, it has brought new dangers, imposed new costs, and taken more and more American lives each week.” Iraq “was not a breeding ground for terrorism,” Kennedy asserts. “Our invasion has made it one.” 'Trumped-Up' 'Double Talk' - He accuses the administration of taking the nation to war on the basis of “trumped-up reasons” and “double-talk,” saying: “The American people were told Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons. He was not. We were told he had stockpiles of other weapons of mass destruction. He did not. We were told he was involved in 9/11. He was not. We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al-Qaeda. It was not. We were told our soldiers would be viewed as liberators. They are not. We were told Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction. It cannot. We were told the war would make America safer. It has not. Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.” Getting out of Iraq - But, Kennedy notes, now that the US is in Iraq, it cannot just withdraw and leave the country “to chaos or civil war [and risk it] becoming a danger to us far greater than it did before. The misguided policy of the past is no excuse for a misguided policy for the future. We need a realistic and specific plan to bring stability to Iraq, to bring genuine self-government to Iraq, to bring our soldiers home with dignity and honor.” Kennedy says he will vote against the administration’s $87 billion “emergency funding” bill for the occupation, and will continue to vote against future bills until the administration outlines a plan for withdrawing from Iraq. “A no vote is not a vote against supporting our troops,” he says. “It is a vote to send the administration back to the drawing board. It is a vote for a new policy—a policy worthy of the sacrifice our soldiers are making, a policy that restores America as a respected member of the family of nations, a policy that will make it easier, not far more difficult, to win the war against terrorism.” 'Huge' Spending Outlay - Kennedy gives examples of what the $87 billion is not being spent on: “It is 87 times what the federal government spends annually on after-school programs.” “It is seven times what President Bush proposed to spend on education for low-income schools in 2004.” “It is nine times what the federal government spends on special education each year.” The World's Next 'Failed Empire?' - Kennedy warns that for the US to continue to be “an occupier of other lands,” to “have to re-learn the lesson that every colonial power in history has learned,” risks making the US “the next failed empire in the world.” The Bush administration ignores the lessons of history, Kennedy says: “The most basic of those lessons is that we cannot rely primarily on military means as a solution to politically-inspired violence. In those circumstances, the tide of history rises squarely against military occupation. The British learned that lesson in Northern Ireland. The French learned it in Algeria. The Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are re-learning it every day in Chechnya. America learned it in Vietnam, and we must not re-learn it in Iraq.” Protecting the US Military - The Bush administration is sacrificing the lives, the health, and the safety of the US soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere to its dreams of empire, Kennedy says. “Even with the best forces in the history of the world, our military cannot succeed if the mission is not achievable, if they are viewed as occupiers, and if we do not have a clearly defined and realistic strategy.… I am profoundly moved by the price they pay to serve our country, and profoundly impressed by their professionalism and commitment.… They tell me that far too many in Iraq believe we are there to take their oil, and that we will stay forever. They have no clear sense about their post-war mission. Some see it as winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Some believe it is security. Some feel it is to obtain intelligence about opposition forces and weapons caches. Others think it is to prevent sabotage of the oil pipelines and other vital infrastructure. Still others say it is to build sidewalks and soccer fields and schools and hospitals, and other local facilities. Not one of the soldiers told me their mission was to achieve Iraq’s transition to democracy.” Supporting the Contractors at the Expense of Supporting the Iraqi People - The administration is far more interested in supporting large private contractors such as Halliburton and KBR, Kennedy says, than it is in actively helping the Iraqi people. “The administration’s policy of rushing to put large multibillion-dollar contracts in the hands of American firms ignores not only the lesson of history but also the lesson of human nature—the Iraqi people need to be the real partners in the reconstruction effort.” While private firms make enormous profits from government contracts, the most basic functions in Iraq remain unrestored. “Why not scale back the lavish resources being provided to US contractors and consultants and provide larger sums directly to the Iraqi people?” he asks. Ignoring Iraq's History of Conflict and Dissension - The administration has flatly ignored a century of history in Iraq, Kennedy says, a century of division and dissension between warring religious, cultural, and ethnic groups. Since the British carved Iraq from the remnants of the collapsing Ottoman Empire after World War I, Kennedy says, the nation has been embroiled in conflict. “Iraq had no history of unity. In the words of one tribal chieftain, ‘History did not die; the tribes and notables who emerged in 1920 and created our modern state in 1921 are here to stay with all the others who came into being thereafter.’ Instead of learning from this painful history, we condemned ourselves to repeat it. Instead of anticipating the obviously similar and predictable divisions and demands when Saddam’s regime fell, the Bush administration believed that a few favored Iraqi exile leaders, many of them in exile for years, could return to Iraq, rally the population, and lead the new government. That was another failure. The Iraqi people rejected them from the start and resisted their domination.” Working with the United Nations - The Bush administration seems unwilling to work with the United Nations to help bring peace and stability to Iraq, Kennedy says—in his view, a critical error. In January 2000, before becoming Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice wrote of the importance of the UN in the US’s foreign relations. Kennedy says: “Condi Rice’s words indict the administration’s own policy now. It is essential to involve the international community as an active and equal partner in the political transition of Iraq. We need to give the UN a central role.… No one doubts that the United States should remain in charge of the military operation. But internationalizing the reconstruction is not a luxury; it is an imperative.” Conclusion - Kennedy concludes by quoting from a book by former President George Herbert Walker Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, reflecting on their experiences with Iraq and the 1991 Gulf War (see September 1998). Overthrow and occupation was the wrong goal in 1991, Bush and Scowcroft wrote, and, Kennedy says, was the wrong goal in 2003. “It is time for this administration to admit that it was wrong, and turn in a new direction.… We need to actively engage the Iraqi people in governing and rebuilding their country. Our soldiers now risking their lives in Iraq deserve no less. Here at home, all Americans are being asked to bear the burden too—and they deserve more than a phony summons to support our troops by pursuing policies that will only condemn them to greater and greater danger. Yes, we must stay the course—but not the wrong course.” [COMMONDREAMS, 10/16/2003] Entity Tags: United Nations, Edward Kennedy, Condoleezza Rice, George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

November 27, 2003: President Bush Visits Troops in Baghdad for Thanksgiving

President Bush holding the fake turkey. [Source: AP / Anja Niedringhaus] President Bush makes a surprise visit to Iraq to have a carefully staged “Thanksgiving dinner with the troops” at the Baghdad International Airport. [WHITE HOUSE, 11/27/2003] Most of the 600 or so troops present for the meal are from the Army’s 1st Armored Division and 82nd Airborne units. For security reasons, Bush never leaves the airport, and leaves shortly after the meal. Bush’s entrance is carefully choreographed, with Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer telling the gathered troops that the most senior official present should read Bush’s Thanksgiving proclamation. Then, turning to a curtained-off area and asking, “Is there anybody back there who’s more senior than us?” Bush enters the area wearing military fatigues. [USA TODAY, 11/27/2003] Fake Turkey - Bush poses with a lovely, huge, golden-brown turkey. The turkey is not real, but merely a prop prepared by the food service arm of Kellogg, Brown and Root. The troops actually eat turkey and vegetables from a cafeteria-style steam tray. White House officials later claim not to have known about the enormous decorative bird, and say that Bush’s memorable photo-op of him holding the fake turkey was an impromptu moment that was not planned in advance. Military sources later say that such decorative turkeys are standard features of holiday “chow lines.” [CBS NEWS, 11/27/2003] Some Soldiers Denied Dinner - Not all the soldiers at the airport are able to eat with the president, or in fact are able to eat at all. In December, Sergeant Loren Russell writes in a letter to Stars & Stripes that soldiers from his unit were denied entrance to the Bob Hope Dining Facility, where Thanksgiving dinner was being served, “because they were in the wrong unit.” Russell writes that his soldiers “understand that President Bush ate there and that upgraded security was required. But why were only certain units turned away? Why wasn’t there a special meal for President Bush and that unit in the new dance hall adjoining the 1st Armored Division’s band building? And all of this happened on Thanksgiving, the best meal of the year when soldiers get a taste of home cooking.” [STARS AND STRIPES, 1/27/2007] Secret Flight - The trip to Iraq is conducted under conditions of extreme secrecy; only Laura Bush and a very few top officials are told of the planned visit. Had word leaked of the trip, it would have been canceled. Most White House officials and reporters are told that Bush would spend the holiday at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Instead, Bush, accompanied by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, is driven away in an unmarked vehicle. At a nearby airport, he boards Air Force One from the back stairs instead of the usual front entrance. After stopping at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where the entourage picks up a few aides, and four reporters and one camera crew sworn to secrecy, the aircraft departs for Iraq. In all, the press corps traveling with the president totals five reporters, five photographers, a TV producer, and a two-person camera crew. All the media members in the group had agreed to surrender their cell phones and wireless e-mail devices beforehand in order to keep them from surreptitiously reporting on the impending trip. [USA TODAY, 11/27/2003; PRESSTHINK, 12/3/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/14/2006] Public Relations Effort - According to New York Times columnist and media reporter Frank Rich, the trip was set in motion by the White House’s public relations team and its desire to chase the Chinook tragedy (see November 2, 2003 and November 2, 2003) off the front pages. [RICH, 2006, PP. 110] White House officials say that Bush had been talking about such a visit for weeks, and the final decision to go was reached the day before in a conference call between Bush and Vice President Cheney. [USA TODAY, 11/27/2003] Journalism professor Jay Rosen later observes that the willing participation of reporters in this kind of event destroys the boundaries between reporters and the subjects they cover. Rosen will write: “The whole notion of the trip as an independently existing thing that could be ‘covered’ is transparently false, as the White House warning to journalists demonstrates. If word leaked out, the trip was to be canceled—it would no longer exist—and the airplane would turn around and head back to Washington. That does not mean the trip was illegitimate to undertake or to treat as news; but it does mean that its potential legitimacy as news event lies outside the logic of ‘things happen and we cover them’ or ‘the president took decisive action and the press reported it.’ Here, the press took action and it was equally decisive. It agreed, first, to go along and record the scene and then to keep the flight a secret; and these decisions by journalists were not incidental to Bush’s decision to go but integral to it. Would the trip have made sense, would the danger have been justified, if reporters and camera crews were not taken along? The answer is clearly no. But this means the press is part of the presidency, an observation that, while true enough, makes it harder to cover the presidency as an independently existing thing.” [PRESSTHINK, 12/3/2003] Negative Reactions - An Army nurse at the American hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, which receives and treats wounded US troops coming from Iraq and Afghanistan, has a different take on Bush’s visit. In an e-mail to the Boston Globe, the nurse, who does not wish her name made public, will write: “My ‘Bush Thanksgiving’ was a little different.… I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq. He had stabilization of his injuries in Iraq and then two long surgeries here for multiple injuries; he’s just now stable enough to send back to the USA. After a few bites of dinner I let him sleep, and then cried with him as he woke up from a nightmare. When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all 19 on the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse.… It’s too bad Mr. Bush didn’t add us to his holiday agenda. The men said the same, but you’ll never read that in the paper. Mr. President would rather lift fake turkeys for photo ops, it seems. Maybe because my patients wouldn’t make very pleasant photos… most don’t look all that great, and the ones with facial wounds and external fixation devices look downright scary. And a heck of a lot of them can’t talk, anyway, and some never will talk again.… Well, this is probably more than you want to know, but there’s no spin on this one. It’s pure carnage.… Like all wars, the ‘shock and awe’ eventually trickles down to blood and death. But you won’t see that. I do, every single day.” Globe columnist Joan Vennochi will add: “How much of this is enough for the president of the United States? It depends whether the goal is public relations for a presidential campaign or public acknowledgment of the consequences of war—the human consequences. They are convalescing in places like Landstuhl.” [BOSTON GLOBE, 12/11/2003] In 2007, author Annia Ciezadlo will recall her Thanksgiving in Baghdad during the same time. Ciezadlo, who spent the holiday with an Iraqi family, will write: “We saw pictures of him later, serving Thanksgiving dinner to American soldiers, posing like a waiter with a great big [turkey] on a tray. He never left the base. ‘You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq,’ he told the troops, ‘so we don’t have to face them in our own country.’ An Iraqi friend once told me it was that line about fighting in Iraq to make America safer that turned his adoration of Mr. Bush into hatred.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/27/2007] Entity Tags: Dan Bartlett, Frank Rich, George W. Bush, Annia Ciezadlo, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, US Department of the Army, Loren Russell, Laura Bush, Jay Rosen, L. Paul Bremer Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation, Domestic Propaganda, 2004 Presidential Election

December 2003 and After: CPA Head Refuses Oversight, Operates on Own Initiative Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer (see May 1, 2003) asserts his independence from US government oversight, a stance assisted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bremer is formally slated to report to Rumsfeld, but says Rumsfeld has no direct authority over him. Instead, Bremer insists, he reports directly to the White House. Rumsfeld, usually jealously protective of his bureaucratic prerogatives, tells National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: “He doesn’t work for me. He works for you” (see Late September, 2003). But Bremer is not willing to report to either Rice or the National Security Council (NSC) either. The White House had already announced that it had no intention of playing a large role in guiding the reconstruction of Iraq, and the NSC’s Executive Steering Group, set up in 2002 to coordinate war efforts, has been dissolved. Finally, Bremer flatly refuses to submit to Rice’s oversight. As a result, Bremer has already made fundamental policy shifts on his own authority that are at odds with what Pentagon planners had intended (see May 16, 2003 and May 23, 2003), with what many feel will be—or already have caused—disastrous consequences. [ROBERTS, 2008, PP. 128-129] Entity Tags: Coalition Provisional Authority, Bush administration, National Security Council, L. Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Before December 18, 2003: 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Says Former Counterterrorism ‘Tsar’ Clarke Cannot Be Trusted to Tell Truth, Must Be Placed under Oath 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow says that former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke must be placed under oath when he is interviewed by the commission. 'I Know Dick Clarke' - Usually, former and current government officials being interviewed by the commission are not placed under oath; this only happens when there is, in author Philip Shenon’s words, “a substantial reason to doubt their truthfulness.” Zelikow tells the staff, “I know Dick Clarke,” and, according to Shenon, argues that “Clarke was a braggart who would try to rewrite history to justify his errors and slander his enemies, [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice in particular.” Zelikow is close to Rice (see January 3, 2001, May-June 2004, and February 28, 2005). Zelikow had also previously told Warren Bass, the commission staffer responsible for the National Security Council, that Clarke should not be believed and that his testimony was suspect. Staff Cannot Talk to Zelikow about Rice - Due to Zelikow’s constant disparagement of Clarke and for other reasons, the staff come to realize that, in Shenon’s words, “they could not have an open discussion in front of Zelikow about Condoleezza Rice and her performance as national security adviser.” In addition, “They could not say openly, certainly not to Zelikow’s face, what many on the staff came to believe: that Rice’s performance in the spring and summer of 2001 amounted to incompetence, or something not far from it.” Effect of Recusal Agreement - Zelikow has concluded a recusal agreement in the commission, as he was involved in counterterrorism on the Bush administration transition team. As a consequence of this agreement, he cannot be involved in questioning Clarke on any issue involving the transition. Shenon will comment: “[Zelikow] had reason to dread what Clarke was about to tell the commission: It was Zelikow, after all, who had been the architect of Clarke’s demotion in the early weeks of the Bush administration, a fact that had never been aired publicly.” First Interview - Clarke is first interviewed by the commission on December 18, and the interview is mostly conducted by Daniel Marcus, the commission’s lawyer. Marcus and the other staffers present at the interview realize within minutes what an important witness Clarke will be and what damage he could do to Bush and Rice. Marcus will later comment, “Here was a guy who is totally unknown outside the Beltway, who had been a Washington bureaucrat all of his life, who turns out to be a dynamite witness.” Clarke tells the commission of charges he will later repeat publicly (see March 21, 2004 and March 24, 2004), saying that Bush and Rice did not take terrorism seriously enough in the run-up to the attacks, that they were more focused on issues left over from the Cold War, and that Bush tried to get him to link the attacks to Iraq. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 145-146, 196-199] Entity Tags: Warren Bass, Philip Zelikow, Daniel Marcus, 9/11 Commission, Richard A. Clarke, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

December 17, 2003: Bush on Iraq’s Lack of WMDs: ‘So What’s the Difference?’

Diane Sawyer with President Bush. [Source: USA Today] President Bush gives a rare one-on-one interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. Among other topics addressed, he reaffirms his belief that terrorists operated in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion (citing Ansar al-Islam, “a al-Qaeda affiliate, I would call them al-Qaeda, was active in Iraq before the war, hence—a terrorist tie with Iraq…”) and that his insistence that Iraq had an active and threatening WMD program was based on “good solid intelligence[, t]he same intelligence that my predecessor [Bill Clinton] operated on.” [ABC NEWS, 12/17/2003] In 2004, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will respond, “His predecessor, however, never claimed that Saddam [Hussein] had imminent… nuclear capacity, nor did his predecessor say that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda.” [DEAN, 2004, PP. 153] Iraq Had WMD Program, Bush Insists - Bush insists that weapons inspector David Kay proved Iraq did have a burgeoning and active WMD program (see October 2, 2003), and implies that it is just a matter of time before the actual weapons are found. Sawyer says, “But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still,” to which Bush replies, “So what’s the difference?” Sawyer appears taken aback by the answer, and Bush continues that since it was possible Hussein would acquire WMDs, it was necessary to “get rid of him” to make “the world a safer, freer place.” Sawyer presses the point home: “What would it take to convince you he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction?” and Bush responds: “Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.” Sawyer asks, “And if he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction?” and Bush replies tartly: “Diane, you can keep asking the question. I’m telling you, I made the right decision for America. Because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait (see August 2, 1990). But the fact that he is not there is, means America’s a more secure country.” [ABC NEWS, 12/17/2003] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later write, “Bush’s response was telling, much more so than I stopped to contemplate at the time.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 200] Why Read the News? - Sawyer asks Bush about his reported penchant for not reading the news for himself. Bush confirms that he gets his news from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who, Sawyer says, “give you a flavor of what’s in the news.” Bush agrees that this is the case, and says: “Yeah. I get my news from people who don’t editorialize. They give me the actual news. And it makes it easier to digest, on a daily basis, the facts.” Sawyer asks, “Is it just harder to read constant criticism or to read?” to which Bush replies: “Why even put up with it when you can get the facts elsewhere? I’m a lucky man. I’ve got, it’s not just Condi and Andy. It’s all kinds of people in my administration who are charged with different responsibilities. And they come in and say, ‘this is what’s happening, this isn’t what’s happening.’” Laura Bush, who joins her husband halfway through the interview, says she reads the newspapers, including the opinion columns, but says: “I agree with him that we can actually get what is really happening from the people who really know what’s happening. And that isn’t always what you get in the newspapers.… There are certain columnists I won’t read. I mean, what, you know, why would I?” [ABC NEWS, 12/17/2003] Wilson: Bush 'Systematically Deceived' US, 'Betrayed' Military - Months later, former ambassador Joseph Wilson will write: “It was clear, from this one statement, […] that the administration, from the president on down, had systematically deceived the American people, Congress, and the world. Most of all, the president had betrayed the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who so bravely march out when ordered into war to defend our country against immiment threats, or even from grave and gathering dangers. Iraq had posed neither. The difference, Mr. President, I thought, is that war was not the only option, or even the best one. We had gone to war over capacity, not stockpiles, not mushroom clouds (see September 4, 2002), not intent, or, as John Bolton had earlier said more directly, because scientists were on Saddam’s payroll. Our troops had died—and were continuing to die—in vain. I came away from this sad revelation resolved that, unlike the other bitterly divisive war debate of my lifetime, over the war in Vietnam, we should admit this terrible fact sooner, rather than later, and thereby revise our national policies accordingly.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 414-415] Entity Tags: Laura Bush, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Scott McClellan, Joseph C. Wilson, David Kay, Diane Sawyer, Al-Qaeda, George W. Bush, Andrew Card, Condoleezza Rice, Ansar al-Islam, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

January 15, 2004: Red Cross Expression Concern to Powell over Detainee Conditions in Iraq Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), meets with Secretary of State Colin Powell and says that the ICRC has “serious concerns about detainees in Iraq,” though according to a senior State Department official, he does not detail them. During his visit, Kellenberger also meets with Condoleezza Rice and, reportedly, with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, though it is unclear what precisely is discussed. White House Spokesman Sean McCormack will later say that “Iraq was not mentioned” during the meeting with Rice. Rather the main topic of discussion was Guantanamo, he says. [OBSERVER, 5/9/2004; BALTIMORE SUN, 5/12/2004] Entity Tags: Sean McCormack, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Jakob Kellenberger, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

January-March 22, 2004: National Security Adviser Rice Privately Regrets 9/11 Comments, Then Publicly Repeats Them The New York Times later reports that in private discussions with the 9/11 Commission in January 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleeza “Rice [is] asked about statements she made in 2001 and 2002 [(see May 16, 2002)] that ‘we could not have imagined’ that terrorists would use aircraft as weapons by piloting them into buildings. She [tells] the commission that she regret[s] those comments, because at the time she was not aware of intelligence, developed in the late 1990s, that some terrorists were thinking of using airplanes as guided missiles. She told the commission in the private session that she should have said, ‘I could not have imagined,’ according to one official familiar with the testimony, making it clear that some in the intelligence community knew about those threats but that she did not.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 4/6/2004] However, in a March 22, 2004 op-ed for the Washington Post entitled “For the Record,” she essentially repeats her 2002 comments, claiming, “Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free US-held terrorists.” [WASHINGTON POST, 3/22/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

January 28, 2004: CIA Director Tenet Privately Tells 9/11 Commission about Urgent Pre-9/11 Warning, but His Testimony Is Kept Secret Former CIA Director George Tenet privately testifies before the 9/11 Commission. He provides a detailed account of an urgent al-Qaeda warning he gave to the White House on July 10, 2001 (see July 10, 2001). According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet displays the slides from the PowerPoint presentation he gave the White House and even offers to testify about it in public. According to the three former officials, the hearing is attended by commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, the commission’s executive director Philip Zelikow, and some staff members. When Tenet testifies before the 9/11 Commission in public later in the year, he will not mention this meeting. The 9/11 Commission will neglect to include Tenet’s warning to the White House in its July 2004 final report. [MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS, 10/2/2006] Portions of a transcript of Tenet’s private testimony will be leaked to reporters in 2006. According to the transcript, Tenet’s testimony included a detailed summary of the briefing he had with CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black on July 10 (see July 10, 2001). The transcript also reveals that he told the commission that Black’s briefing had prompted him to request an urgent meeting with Rice about it. This closely matches the account in Woodward’s 2006 book that first widely publicized the July meeting (see September 29, 2006). [WASHINGTON POST, 10/3/2006] Shortly after Woodward’s book is published, the 9/11 Commission staff will deny knowing that the July meeting took place. Zelikow and Ben-Veniste, who attended Tenet’s testimony, will say they are unable to find any reference to it in their files. But after the transcript is leaked, Ben-Veniste will suddenly remember details of the testimony (see September 30-October 3, 2006) and will say that Tenet did not indicate that he left his meeting with Rice with the impression he had been ignored, as Tenet has alleged. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/2/2006] Woodward’s book will describe why Black, who also privately testified before the 9/11 Commission, felt the commission did not mention the July meeting in their final report: “Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about. It was what happened in investigations. There were questions they wanted to ask, and questions they didn’t want to ask.” [WOODWARD, 2006, PP. 78] Entity Tags: Richard Ben-Veniste, Philip Zelikow, White House, Cofer Black, Central Intelligence Agency, Condoleezza Rice, 9/11 Commission, Al-Qaeda, George J. Tenet Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

January 29, 2004: David Kay Meets with President and Other White House Officials to Discuss Lack of WMDs David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, meets with President Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Card. The day before (see January 28, 2004), Kay had told Congress, “We were almost all wrong” about intelligence on Iraq’s presumed arsenal of illegal weapons. Bush wants to know what went wrong, but shows no anger. “The president accepted it,” Kay later recalls. “There was no sign of disappointment from Bush. He was at peace with his decision to go to war. I don’t think he ever lost ten minutes of sleep over the failure to find WMDs.” [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 349] Entity Tags: David Kay, Andrew Card, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

February 6, 2004: Press Secretary Testifies before Grand Jury White House press secretary Scott McClellan testifies before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak. He is quizzed before some 35 or 40 jurors by prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg. Most of the questions are reiterations of those asked in earlier interviews (see Mid-October 2003, Late October or Early November, 2003, and January 2004), but Zeidenberg asks some that have not yet been asked. One question is whether McClellan had told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to say that White House political adviser Karl Rove was not involved in the leak before her September 28 appearance on Meet the Press. Though Rice had not specifically discussed the leak on that broadcast, McClellan recalls briefing her on a number of issues. He cannot recall, he testifies, whether he discussed the subject of the leak with Rice or not, and tells Zeidenberg that he probably told her what he said publicly (see September 29, 2003), and to refer back to that if pressed. McClellan is startled when Zeidenberg asks him bluntly whether President Bush had told him in the Oval Office that Rove had denied to him any involvement in the leak. McClellan knows that Bush has not yet testified, but chief of staff Andrew Card has, and Card most likely revealed Bush’s comments. McClellan will later write: “Knowing the president’s preference that his private conversations remain private, I hesitated momentarily [in answering the question]. But this was different. A frog in my throat, I managed to confirm that the president had indeed made such a statement.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 225-227] Days after McClellan’s testimony, someone the Washington Post identifies as “a source close to the investigation” will say that McClellan and other White House witnesses are asked about cell phone calls, and shown handwritten, diary-style notes from colleagues and e-mails from reporters to administration officials. The source will say the questioning of McClellan and others is often quite aggressive, with agents focusing on specific conversations with journalists. “Even witnesses that they describe as being potentially helpful are being treated as adversaries,” the source will say. [WASHINGTON POST, 2/10/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, Peter Zeidenberg, George W. Bush, Andrew Card, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

February 7, 2004: 9/11 Commission Has Private Meeting with National Security Adviser Rice; She Is Not Put under Oath, No Transcript Is Made The 9/11 Commission has a private meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. The meeting is held in the White House’s Situation Room, the location apparently chosen by Rice in an attempt to impress the commissioners. Questioning Is 'Polite but Pointed' - The White House has insisted that the encounter be described as a “meeting” rather than an “interview,” because that would sound too formal and prosecutorial. In addition, there is to be no recording of the interview and Rice is not placed under oath. The time limit on the interview is two hours, but it actually lasts four. Rice’s close associate Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission’s executive director, attends, but is not allowed to say anything because he has been recused from this part of the investigation. The questioning is led by Daniel Marcus, the Commission’s lawyer, and will be described as “polite but pointed” by author Philip Shenon. Commissioners Privately Critical of Rice - The commissioners are aware of allegations that Rice performed poorly in the run-up to 9/11 (see Before December 18, 2003), but are unwilling to aggressively attack an accomplished black woman. However, they think the allegations are well-founded. Commission Chairman Tom Kean will say, “obviously Rice bears a tremendous amount of responsibility for not understanding how serious this threat [of terrorist attacks] was.” Commissioner John Lehman will say that he has “no doubt” former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger would have paid more attention to the warnings of a forthcoming attack. Fellow commissioner Slade Gorton will say that the administration’s failure to act on the urgent warnings was “spectacularly wrong.” Commissioner Jamie Gorelick will comment that Rice “assumed away the hardest part of her job,” and that she should have focused on keeping the president up to date on events, rather than trying to put his intentions into action. Commissioner Bob Kerrey will agree with this and will later recall one of Rice’s comments at this meeting, “I took the president’s thoughts and I helped the president describe what he was thinking.” According to Kerrey, this shows how Rice performed her job incorrectly. She should have been advising the president on what to do, not packaging his thoughts. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 230-239] Entity Tags: Richard Ben-Veniste, Thomas Kean, Slade Gorton, Philip Zelikow, Daniel Marcus, Jamie Gorelick, 9/11 Commission, Bob Kerrey, Condoleezza Rice, John Lehman Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

March 21, 2004: Victims’ Relatives Demand that 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Resign

Philip Zelikow. [Source: Miller Center] The 9/11 Family Steering Committee and 9/11 Citizens Watch demand the resignation of Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission. The demand comes shortly after former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke told the New York Times that Zelikow was present when he gave briefings on the threat posed by al-Qaeda to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice from December 2000 to January 2001. The Family Steering Committee, a group of 9/11 victims’ relatives, writes: “It is clear that [Zelikow] should never have been permitted to be a member of the Commission, since it is the mandate of the Commission to identify the source of failures. It is now apparent why there has been so little effort to assign individual culpability. We now can see that trail would lead directly to the staff director himself.” Zelikow has been interviewed by his own Commission because of his role during the transition period. But a spokesman for the Commission claims that having Zelikow recluse himself from certain topics is enough to avoid any conflicts of interest. [NEW YORK TIMES, 3/20/2004; UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 3/23/2004] 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean defends Zelikow on NBC’s Meet the Press, calling him “one of the best experts on terrorism in the whole area of intelligence in the entire country” and “the best possible person we could have found for the job.” [NBC, 4/4/2004] Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton adds, “I found no evidence of a conflict of interest of any kind.” Author Philip Shenon will comment: “If there had been any lingering doubt that Zelikow would survive as executive director until the end of the investigation, Kean and Hamilton had put it to rest with their statements of support… on national television. Zelikow would remain in charge.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 263] However, Salon points out that the “long list” of Zelikow’s writings “includes only one article focused on terrorism,” and he appears to have written nothing about al-Qaeda. [SALON, 4/6/2004] Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, Thomas Kean, Philip Shenon, Richard A. Clarke, Lee Hamilton, Al-Qaeda, 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Citizens Watch, Condoleezza Rice, 9/11 Family Steering Committee Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

March 22, 2004 and Shortly After: White House Hits Back at Former Counterterrorism ‘Tsar’ over Allegations The White House responds aggressively to comments made the previous day by former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke (see March 24, 2004), who accused the Bush administration of doing little about terrorism prior to 9/11 (see March 21, 2004). Author Philip Shenon will characterize the situation at the White House following the comments as a “near panic” and “genuine alarm,” because Clarke’s allegations are “a direct threat to [President] Bush’s reelection hopes.” Rice Leads Response - White House chief of staff Andy Card will say that the most upset person is Clarke’s former boss Condoleezza Rice, who takes the lead in responding. She appears on several television shows, claiming—in what Shenon calls a “remarkably angry tone”—on 60 Minutes: “Dick Clarke just does not know what he’s talking about.… Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction, and he chose not to.” Vice President Dick Cheney says that Clarke has a “grudge” against the administration because he did not get a position at the Department of Homeland Security that he wanted, adding that Clarke “wasn’t in the loop, frankly” and “clearly missed a lot of what was going on.” Shenon will comment, “Cheney’s remarks had unintentionally proved exactly what Clarke was saying—that his authority was so diminished in the Bush administration that he had no ability to reach the decision makers in the White house when threats emerged.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 277-279] Having It Both Ways? - “You can’t have it both ways,” adds retired General Wesley Clark, the former commander of NATO forces in Bosnia. He was “either the counterterrorism czar and was responsible and knew what was going on, or the administration gave him a title and didn’t put any emphasis on terrorism and that’s why he wasn’t in the loop.” [RICH, 2006, PP. 114-119] Surrogate Smears - Surrogates try dirty tactics, for example conservative columnist Robert Novak suggests that Clarke is motivated by racial prejudice against Rice, a “powerful African-American woman,” and conservative commentator Laura Ingraham asks why “this single man” is such a “drama queen.” Although Clarke anticipated attacks, he is surprised at their ferocity. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 277-279] Former White House communications director Karen Hughes interrupts her book tour to criticize Clarke for supposedly promoting his own book, Against All Enemies. Right-wing bloggers, perhaps given direction by White House officials, begin swapping lascivious and baseless rumors about Clarke’s sexual orientation. [RICH, 2006, PP. 114-119] The Washington Times accuses Clarke of being “a political chameleon who is starved for attention after years of toiling anonymously in government bureaucracies.” Neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer calls Clarke “a partisan perjurer.” At the extreme edge of the attack is conservative author Ann Coulter, who with no evidence whatsoever, accuses Clarke of racism: she portrays him as thinking of Condoleezza Rice, “[T]he black chick is a dummy” whom Bush promoted from “cleaning the Old Executive Office Building at night.” [SALON, 3/29/2004] Senator John McCain (R-AZ) calls the attacks “the most vigorous offensive I’ve ever seen from the administration on any issue.” [WASHINGTON POST, 3/28/2004] Clarke's Counters - Republican leaders also threaten to release testimony Clarke gave in 2002, and Clarke says he welcomes the release. The testimony remains classified. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/26/2004; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/28/2004] Clarke calls on Rice to release all e-mail communications between the two of them before 9/11; these are not released either. [GUARDIAN, 3/29/2004] Despite the attacks, Clarke’s partners in a consulting business stick with him, as does ABC News, which recently hired him as a terrorism consultant. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 277-279] Mishandled Response? - According to Reuters, a number of political experts conclude, “The White House may have mishandled accusations leveled by… Clarke by attacking his credibility, keeping the controversy firmly in the headlines into a second week.” [REUTERS, 3/29/2004] No Evidence of Contradiction - However, a review of declassified citations from Clarke’s 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. [WASHINGTON POST, 4/4/2004] Entity Tags: Robert Novak, John McCain, Karen Hughes, Philip Shenon, Condoleezza Rice, Charles Krauthammer, Laura Ingraham, Andrew Card, Ann Coulter, Wesley Clark, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard A. Clarke, Washington Times Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

March 22, 2004: Media Sensation Follows Clarke’s ‘60 Minutes’ Appearance A media firestorm follows the previous day’s appearance by former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke on CBS’s 60 Minutes (see March 21, 2004). In that interview and in his upcoming book, Against All Enemies, Clarke is frank about the administration’s stubborn insistence on tying Iraq to the 9/11 attacks and using those attacks to justify a war it had already begun planning (see Between March 2001 and May 2001). Clarke also gives incendiary information about the repeated warnings Bush and other officials had received about the imminent attacks, warnings which were roundly ignored (see Between August 6 and September 11, 2001 and September 4, 2001). White House communications director Dan Bartlett calls Clarke’s charges “baseless,” and “politically motivated,” without giving any evidence of any such political loyalties or motivations Clarke may have. Clarke refuses to retreat, and reiterates his claims on today’s morning talk shows (see March 22, 2004); the White House sends National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice onto the same shows to refute Clarke. [RICH, 2006, PP. 114-119] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Dan Bartlett, Richard A. Clarke, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

March 24, 2004: NBC Anchor Criticizes National Security Adviser Rice for Not Testifying Before 9/11 Commission NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw interviews National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Brokaw criticizes Rice’s refusal to appear publicly before the 9/11 Commission because of “national security concerns” while at the same time appearing on a plethora of news broadcasts to defend the administration’s actions surrounding the 9/11 attacks (see March 30, 2004). Brokaw says: “You’ve been meeting with the Commission in private, but you will not go before this very public meeting, citing separation of powers, executive privilege. But your predecessors have gone before Congress in the past. Even President Ford testified about his pardon of Richard Nixon (see Mid-October 1974). Executive privilege is really a flexible concept. Why not go to the president on this issue that is so profoundly important to America, and say, I should be testifying?” Rice defends her decision not to testify under oath and before the cameras, saying: “I would like nothing better than to be able to testify before the Commission. I have spent more than four hours with the Commission. I’m prepared to go and talk to them again, anywhere, any time, anyplace, privately. But I have to be responsible and to uphold the separation of powers between the executive and the legislature. It is a matter of whether the president can count on good confidential advice from his staff.” Brokaw replies: “Dr. Rice, with all due respect, I think a lot of people are watching this tonight saying, well, if she can appear on television, write commentaries, but she won’t appear before the Commission under oath. It just doesn’t seem to make sense.” Rice reiterates that she is defending “a constitutional principle,” and insists, “We’re not hiding anything.” Author and media critic Frank Rich will later write, “The White House, so often masterly in its TV management, particularly when it came to guarding its 9/11 franchise in an election year, was wildly off its game” during this period. Eventually Rice, unable to defend her refusal to testify in light of her frequent public pronouncements, will agree to testify before the Commission (see April 8, 2004). [RICH, 2006, PP. 114-119] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, 9/11 Commission, Tom Brokaw, Frank Rich, NBC News Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

March 24, 2004: White House Discloses Former Counterterrorism ‘Tsar’ Clarke Was Anonymous Official Who Gave Background Briefing The White House discloses to Fox News that former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke was the anonymous official who gave a background briefing to reporters in August 2002 praising the Bush administration’s record on terrorism (see August 22, 2002). This move, which violates a longstanding confidentiality policy, is made hours before Clarke is to testify to the 9/11 Commission (see March 24, 2004). Clarke recently went public with criticism of the administration (see March 21, 2004) and is being attacked by it (see March 22, 2004 and Shortly After). Author Philip Shenon will comment, “In agreeing to allow Fox News to reveal that Clarke had given the 2002 briefing, the White House was attempting to paint him as a liar—a one-time Bush defender who had become a Bush critic in order to sell a book.” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says to the media: “There are two very different stories here. These stories can’t be reconciled.” [FOX NEWS, 3/24/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 3/25/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 3/26/2004; SHENON, 2008, PP. 280-281] Opposing Spin? - Shenon will add that in the briefing Clarke was “spin[ning] the facts” in order to try to knock down an article unfavorable to the administration published by Time magazine, although “the spin took him perilously close to dishonesty, albeit the sort of dishonesty practiced every day in official Washington.” Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission’s executive director and a long-term opponent of Clarke (see January 3, 2001 and January 27, 2003), is delighted by the story and tells a Commission staffer that it might be enough to end the Clarke “circus,” adding, “Does it get any better than this?” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 280-281] Later trying a similar line of attack, Republican Senate leader Bill Frist will ask “[i]f [Clarke] lied under oath to the United States Congress” in closed testimony in 2002, and also ask if Clarke is attempting to promote his book. According to media critic Frank Rich, Frist’s credibility is undermined by his use of his Senate status to promote his own book, a virtually worthless primer entitled When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism from the Senate’s Only Doctor. Frist’s accusation that Clarke revealed classified information in his book falls flat when Clarke notes that the White House vetted his book for possible security transgressions before publication. [WASHINGTON POST, 3/27/2004; RICH, 2006, PP. 114-119] No Evidence of Contradiction - A review of declassified citations from Clarke’s 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. [WASHINGTON POST, 4/4/2004] Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, Richard A. Clarke, Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow, Washington Times, Frank Rich, Bill Frist Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

March 28, 2004: Richard Clarke Uses Bush Letter to Counter Criticism Former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, lambasted by Bush administration supporters (see March 24, 2004) for his criticism of the administration’s foreign policies (see March 21, 2004 and March 24, 2004), counters some of that criticism by noting that when he resigned from the administration a year earlier, he was highly praised by President Bush (see January 31, 2003). Differing Characterizations from Administration - On Meet the Press, Clarke reads aloud the handwritten note from Bush that lauds his service, telling host Tim Russert: “This is his writing. This is the president of the United States’ writing. And when they’re engaged in character assassination of me, let’s just remember that on January 31, 2003: ‘Dear Dick, you will be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor. You have left a positive mark on our government.’ This is not the normal typewritten letter that everybody gets. This is the president’s handwriting. He thinks I served with distinction and honor. The rest of his staff is out there trying to destroy my professional life, trying to destroy my reputation, because I had the temerity to suggest that a policy issue should be discussed. What is the role of the war on terror vis-a-vis the war in Iraq? Did the war in Iraq really hurt the war on terror? Because I suggest we should have a debate on that, I am now being the victim of a taxpayer-paid—because all these people work for the government—character assassination campaign.” Never Briefed Bush on Terrorism - Clarke also notes that the letter proves he never briefed Bush on terrorism because he was not allowed to provide such a briefing (see Early January 2001). He tells Russert: “You know, they’re saying now that when I was afforded the opportunity to talk to him about cybersecurity, it was my choice. I could have talked about terrorism or cybersecurity. That’s not true. I asked in January to brief him, the president, on terrorism, to give him the same briefing I had given Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell, and [Condoleezza] Rice. And I was told, ‘You can’t do that briefing, Dick, until after the policy development process.’” [MSNBC, 3/28/2004; SALON, 3/29/2004] Administration Should Declassifiy August 2002 Briefing - Clarke also calls on the administration to declassify “all six hours” of the briefing he gave to top officials in August 2002 about the impending threat of a terrorist attack (see August 22, 2002). The administration has selectively declassified material from that briefing to impugn Clarke’s honesty and integrity. “I would welcome it being declassified,” Clarke says. “But not just a little line here and there—let’s declassify all six hours of my testimony.” He also asks that the administration declassify the strategy reports from 2001 that he authored, and all of his e-mails between January 2001 and September 2001, to prove that the charges laid against him by the administration are false. He calls on the White House to end what he calls the “vicious personal attacks” and “character assassination,” and focus on issues. “The issue is not about me,” he tells a CNN reporter. “The issue is about the president’s performance in the war on terrorism.” [MSNBC, 3/28/2004; CNN, 3/28/2004] Entity Tags: Colin Powell, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Bush administration, Richard A. Clarke, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

March 30, 2004: White House Makes Deal to Prevent Additional Public 9/11 Hearings for Bush Officials The Bush administration bows to growing pressure in the wake of former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission (see March 21, 2004) and agrees to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify before the Commission in public and under oath. It also agrees that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney can be interviewed in private by the whole Commission. However, according to the New York Times, “In exchange for her appearance, the [9/11 Commission] agreed not to seek testimony from other White House aides at public hearings, although it can continue to question them in private.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 3/31/2004] There was some debate in the administration over whether Rice would testify or not. As she is national security adviser and there are no allegations of criminal wrongdoing, there are good grounds for Rice refusing to testify under the doctrine of executive privilege, and this argument is made in particular by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s counsel. However, Rice insists that she wants to testify. According to author Philip Shenon, she is “uncharacteristically frantic” over the issue. White House chief of staff Andy Card will say, “Condi desperately wanted to do it.” Shenon will write of the decision, which is made by President Bush: “The political pressure on the White House was too great, and Rice’s persuasive powers with the president were more than a match for Alberto Gonzales’s. Rice was as strong-willed as any member of the White house staff. Gonzales was strong-willed until the president told him otherwise.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 289-292] Author and media critic Frank Rich will later write: “The dirty little secret about the uproar over Clarke’s revelations were that many of them had been previously revealed by others, well before he published his book. But as the Bush administration knew better than anyone, perception was all, and perception began with images on television. Clarke had given the charges a human face.” The administration is sending Rice to testify publicly before the Commission, Rich will write, in part because she is the most telegenic of Bush’s top advisers, and has the best chance of “rebranding” the story with her face and testimony. [RICH, 2006, PP. 119] Entity Tags: White House, Frank Rich, Philip Shenon, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Alberto R. Gonzales, 9/11 Commission, David S. Addington, Andrew Card Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

Late March 2004: Rice Demands Jamaica Expel Former Haitian Leader US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice demands that Jamaica expel Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the region, claiming that his presence in the Caribbean will increase tension in Haiti. She also threatens Jamaica, saying that if anything happens to US soldiers in Haiti, that Jamaica would be blamed and subjected to the full force of the US. [DEMOCRACY NOW!, 4/25/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Jean-Bertrand Aristide Timeline Tags: Haiti Coup

April 8, 2004: Condoleezza Rice Testifies before the 9/11 Commission

Condoleezza Rice sworn in before the 9/11 Commission. [Source: Larry Downing/ Reuters] National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testifies before the 9/11 Commission under oath and with the threat of perjury. The Bush administration originally opposed her appearance, but relented after great public demand (see March 30, 2004). [INDEPENDENT, 4/3/2004] The testimony is a huge media event and major television networks interrupt their programming to carry it live. First, the Commission’s Democratic Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton reads a statement trying to establish a tone of non-confrontation and saying that the Commission’s purpose is “not to put any witness on the spot,” but “to understand and to inform.” Rice Reads Lengthy Statement - Knowing that she has a deal to appear only once and for a limited time, Rice begins by reading a statement much longer than those read by other witnesses testifying before the Commission, a move specifically approved by Hamilton and the Commission’s chairman Tom Kean. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 293, 295] In the statement she repeats her claim that “almost all of the reports [before 9/11] focused on al-Qaeda activities outside the United States.… The information that was specific enough to be actionable referred to terrorists operation overseas.” Moreover, she stresses that the “kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.” But she concedes: “In fact there were some reports done in ‘98 and ‘99. I think I was—I was certainly not aware of them.” [WASHINGTON POST, 4/8/2004] Heated Questioning from Democrats - The exchanges with the Republican commissioners are polite, but Rice’s interactions with the Democrats on the Commission become heated. According to author Philip Shenon, her strategy is to “try to run out the clock—talk and talk and talk, giving them no chance to ask follow-up questions before the 10 minutes that each of the commissioners had been allotted had run out.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 295] During questioning several subjects are discussed: Why didn’t counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke brief President Bush on al-Qaeda before September 11? Clarke says he had wished to do so, but Rice states, “Clarke never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism.” What was the content of the briefing President Bush received on August 6, 2001 (see August 6, 2001)? While Rice repeatedly underlines that it was “a historical memo… not threat reporting,” commissioners Richard Ben-Veniste and Tim Roemer ask her why it cannot therefore be declassified. [WASHINGTON POST, 4/8/2004] Asked what the PDB item’s still-secret title is, Rice gives it as “Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside the United States,” leading to an audible gasp from the audience. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 298] Two days later, the White House will finally publish it, and it will be shown to contain more than just historical information. Did Rice tell Bush of the existence of al-Qaeda cells in the US before August 6, 2001? Rice says that she does not remember whether she “discussed it with the president.” Were warnings properly passed on? Rice points out: “The FBI issued at least three nationwide warnings to federal, state, and law enforcement agencies, and specifically stated that although the vast majority of the information indicated overseas targets, attacks against the homeland could not be ruled out. The FBI tasked all 56 of its US field offices to increase surveillance of known suspected terrorists and to reach out to known informants who might have information on terrorist activities.” But commissioner Jamie Gorelick remarks: “We have no record of that. The Washington field office international terrorism people say they never heard about the threat, they never heard about the warnings.” [WASHINGTON POST, 4/8/2004] Under questioning from Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey, she admits that she worked with Philip Zelikow, the Commission’s executive director, during the Bush administration transition, and that they discussed terrorism issues. She claims that a plan Clarke presented to her to roll back al-Qaeda in January 2001 (see January 25, 2001) was not actually a plan, but merely “a set of ideas and a paper” that had not been implemented. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 299-300] Central Issues Unresolved - Rice does not apologize to the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, as Clarke did weeks earlier. The Associated Press comments, “The blizzard of words in Condoleezza Rice’s testimony Thursday did not resolve central points about what the government knew, should have known, did, and should have done before the September 11 terrorist attacks.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/8/2004] Testimony an 'Ambitious Feat of Jujitsu' - The Washington Post calls her testimony “an ambitious feat of jujitsu: On one hand, she made a case that ‘for more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America’s response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient.’ At the same time, she argued that there was nothing in particular the Bush administration itself could have done differently that would have prevented the attacks of September 11, 2001—that there was no absence of vigor in the White House’s response to al-Qaeda during its first 233 days in office. The first thesis is undeniably true; the second both contradictory and implausible.” [WASHINGTON POST, 4/9/2004] 'Cherry-Picking' Rice's Testimony - In 2009, Lawrence Wilkerson, who is chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2004, will recall: “John [Bellinger, the legal adviser to the National Security Council] and I had to work on the 9/11 Commission testimony of Condi. Condi was not gonna do it, not gonna do it, not gonna do it, and then all of a sudden she realized she better do it. That was an appalling enterprise. We would cherry-pick things to make it look like the president had been actually concerned about al-Qaeda. We cherry-picked things to make it look as if the vice president and others, Secretary Rumsfeld and all, had been. They didn’t give a sh_t about al-Qaeda. They had priorities. The priorities were lower taxes, ballistic missiles, and the defense thereof.” [VANITY FAIR, 2/2009] Entity Tags: Jamie Gorelick, Lee Hamilton, Lawrence Wilkerson, George W. Bush, John Bellinger, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bob Kerrey, Bush administration, Tim Roemer, Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Kean, Richard Ben-Veniste, 9/11 Commission, Richard A. Clarke Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

(May 2004): National Security Adviser Told CIA Has Innocent Man at Black Site CIA Director George Tenet informs National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that the agency has been holding an innocent German named Khalid el-Masri at a black site for several months (see January 23 - March 2004). Rice’s demeanor during the meeting will be described as “very flat, as always,” and after hearing the story she says slowly, “Okay.” Tenet then explains the plan to conduct a “reverse rendition,” releasing el-Masri with a large amount of cash, but with no explanation to anyone, including the German government. Rice disagrees with the plan. “Your plan won’t work. We have to tell the Germans. We can’t put the president in the position of telling a lie to our allies,” she says. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is also consulted about the matter, and agrees with Rice’s assessment. [MAYER, 2008, PP. 286] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Central Intelligence Agency, Khalid el-Masri, Richard Armitage, George J. Tenet Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

May 3, 2004: Human Rights Watch Tells Condoleezza Rice Abuse in Iraq Not Isolated Incidents Human Rights Watch sends a letter to US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice informing her that the ill treatment and torture of prisoners by the US military in Iraq is not limited to isolated incidents. The organization emphasizes that it is a systemic and widespread problem and urges the US to take immediate action to ensure that imprisonment and interrogation practices comply with international law. [ROTH AND MALINOWSKI, 5/3/2004; HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 5/7/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Human Rights Watch Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

June 2004: Top Democrat Helps Get Passages Critical of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice Deleted from Final Text of 9/11 Commission Report As the 9/11 Commission report is being finalized, the consultant charged with drafting it, Ernest May, comes to favor an account of the Bush administration’s treatment of terrorism before 9/11 given by former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke. Clarke has said that the administration did not pay enough attention to the problem of terrorism, whereas his former superior, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, had argued the administration did what it could, but the attacks were unstoppable. May comes to this conclusion after reviewing the documentation obtained by the commission, despite the fact that he is close to the commission’s executive director Philip Zelikow, who had worked with Rice in the past (see 1995 and January 3, 2001) and is trying to downplay Clarke’s role. The language of the draft report reflects May’s views, but others working on the report, including an unnamed prominent Democrat on the staff, say the language is “inflammatory,” and get it taken out of the report. According to May, the report is then written in such a way as to avoid “even implicit endorsement of Clarke’s public charge.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 390-391] Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice, Ernest May, Philip Zelikow, Richard A. Clarke Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

June 8, 2004: Powell, Rice Confront Gonzales over Secret Torture Memo National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell learn of the two-year-old Justice Department torture memo (see August 1, 2002) from the Washington Post article revealing its existence (see June 8, 2004). Both confront White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. According to a senior White House official, Rice “very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions on international and national security law,” and threatens to go to President Bush if Gonzales keeps them out of the loop on anything else. Powell admiringly comments, as they are leaving Gonzales’s office, that Rice was “in full Nurse Ratched mode,” a reference to the head nurse of the mental hospital in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Neither of them take their objections to Vice President Cheney, says the official: that would be a much more dangerous course. [WASHINGTON POST, 6/25/2007] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Alberto R. Gonzales, Colin Powell Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

July 26, 2004: Threat to Suspend Elections Has No Basis in Law, Former White House Counsel Writes Former White House counsel John Dean examines the idea that the government may postpone the presidential elections in the light of an alleged terror threat (see July 8, 2004), and finds it wanting. Dean notes that the idea of postponing the elections is bogus: “There is no such proposal. In fact, it is not legally possible because there are no laws giving the president, or anyone else, such authority.” A Homeland Security spokesperson has said, “DHS is not looking into a contingency plan,” and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has said, “I don’t know where the idea that there might be some postponement of elections comes from.” As others have noted, Rice pointed out that even during the Civil War, then-President Abraham Lincoln refused to consider the idea of postponing the 1864 elections. Christopher Cox (R-CA), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said flatly: “Were we to postpone the elections, it would represent a victory for the terrorists.… The election is going to go forward.” Dean writes “that the Bush administration has completely disregarded the need to protect the workings of our electoral process, which is highly susceptible to terror attacks,” noting that large-scale, well-timed terror strikes could catastrophically disrupt the election process. [FINDLAW, 7/26/2004] Author and media critic Frank Rich is more prosaic, writing in 2006 that both the terror alerts and the vague threats to consider suspending the elections are merely attempts to frighten and cow the American citizenry. [RICH, 2006, PP. 146] Entity Tags: House Homeland Security Committee, Christopher Cox, Frank Rich, US Department of Homeland Security, Condoleezza Rice, John Dean Timeline Tags: 2004 Presidential Election

August 2004: Criticism of the Homeland Security Terror Alert System In early August 2004, Bush administration officials make multiple television appearances to defend increased alert levels in three cities during the previous week (see August 1, 2004). They also highlight the administration’s focus on terror threats. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says “You have to go out and warn. You have a duty to warn.” New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, appearing on the same program, says that he takes the warnings “very seriously,” adding that they “helped to make us even more alert.” However, retired General Wesley Clark, former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential nominee, says that the way in which the warnings are used “undercut the credibility of the system.” Former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke says the Bush administration’s warning system is “a laughingstock” among state, local and business officials he has talked to. He says that Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge “is not a good spokesman for this issue. When he says things like ‘Here’s a warning,’ then in the next breath says the president is doing a great job, that just raises suspicions.” [CNN, 8/9/2004] Criticism of the terror alert system is wide-ranging. Robert Butterworth, a trauma psychologist in Los Angeles, says the alert system creates “anticipatory anxiety,” in which unnecessary fear is spread among the public. Others believe that the very nature of the system is counter-productive. Robert Pfaltzgraff, a security expert at Tufts University, says that the system could alert terrorists to the information discovered by US officials and could jeopardize sources. The alerts could also be used by terrorists to mislead US officials. “Everyone is looking at truck bombs, car bombs, and suicide bombers,” says Randall Larsen, CEO and founder of Homeland Security Associates; “How about if they planned a different kind of attack?” An increase in the alert level could also be seen as a challenge by a dedicated terrorist cell. “There’s going to be a core group of people who want to do it in any event, and might even view it is a dare to see if they can actually do it,” says Juliette Kayyem, a homeland security specialist at Harvard University. “Basically it’s been a failed system so far.” [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 8/4/2004] Entity Tags: Tom Ridge, Wesley Clark, Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani, Robert Pfaltzgraff, Robert Butterworth, Homeland Security Associates, Frances Townsend, Condoleezza Rice, Juliette Kayyem, Randall Larsen, Richard A. Clarke Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

October 3, 2004: Condoleezza Rice Insists Iraq’s Intent for Aluminum Tubes Still Being Debated Responding to a New York Times article which described how the CIA and the White House ignored expert opinions that the tubes were not meant for use as rotors in a gas centrifuge, Condoleezza Rice says on ABC’s “This Week” program: “As I understand it, people are still debating this. And I’m sure they will continue to debate it.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/4/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

October 25, 2004: Media Learns of Missing Explosives from Al Qaqaa

A 1996 photograph of one of the Al Qaqaa storage bunkers. [Source: New York Times] The US media learns that Iraq’s interim government reports that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives, used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads, and detonate nuclear weapons, are missing from a former military installation (see October 10, 2004). The facility, Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under US control but in reality is “a no-man’s land,” in the words of the New York Times, “picked over by looters as recently as” October 24. UN inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had monitored the huge cache of explosives for years. The IAEA says that machine tools usable for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes are also missing. White House and Pentagon inspectors admit that the explosives disappeared some time after the US-led invasion of Iraq. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was informed of the missing explosives within the last month; according to the Times, “[i]t is unclear whether President Bush was informed.” US officials began answering questions about the missing explosives after reporters from the Times and CBS’s “60 Minutes” began asking questions. The CIA’s Iraq Survey Group has been asked to investigate the disappearance. Similar Explosives Used in Other Terrorist Attacks - The immediate concern, according to US officials, is the explosives’ possible use in major bombing attacks against American and/or Iraqi forces. The explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, can be used in bombs strong enough to destroy airplanes or large buildings. The Times notes that the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland (see After December 21, 1988) used less than a pound of such explosive. Larger amounts of the same kinds of explosives were used in the November 2003 Riyadh bombings (see May 12, 2003) and a September 1999 bombing of a Moscow apartment complex (see September 9, 1999 and September 13, 1999). The explosives can also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, the primary reason why it had been, until the invasion, monitored by UN inspectors from the IAEA. Repeated IAEA Warnings - The IAEA had publicly warned about the danger of the Al Qaqaa explosives before the invasion, and after the overthrow of the Iraqi government, IAEA officials specifically told US officials that they needed to keep the facility locked down (see May 2003). Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita says that the missing explosives need to be kept in perspective, as US and allied forces “have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types.” Iraq’s Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Rashad Omar, tells Times and CBS reporters: “Yes, they [the 380 tons of explosives] are missing. We don’t know what happened.” Omar says that after the invasion, Al Qaqaa was the responsibility of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which served as Iraq’s de facto government until June 2004 (see June 28, 2004). “After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control,” he says. “So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials.” The CPA is defunct; Bush administration officials say they don’t know where the explosives could be. One senior official says that the Qaqaa complex was listed as a “medium priority” site on the CIA’s list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. “Should we have gone there? Definitely,” says one senior official. Another senior official says that US soldiers gave the Qaqaa facility a cursory inspection during the push towards Baghdad in early April, but “saw no bunkers bearing the IAEA seal.” Refusal to Allow IAEA Inspections after Occupation - Satellite photos taken in late 2003 showed that two of the ten bunkers containing HMX had exploded, presumably from bombing during the US offensive, but eight remained relatively intact. The Bush administration refused to let the IAEA back into Iraq to inspect and verify the Qaqaa facility or any of the other stockpiles formerly monitored by IAEA officials. By May 2004, the IAEA was warning CPA officials that the facility had probably been looted (see May 2004). More Unguarded Stockpiles - Iraq is dotted with unguarded stockpiles of explosives, say US military and administration officials. One senior administration official notes, “The only reason this stockpile was under seal is because it was located at Al Qaqaa,” where nuclear work had gone on years ago. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/25/2004] Entity Tags: Lawrence Di Rita, New York Times, Condoleezza Rice, Coalition Provisional Authority, CBS News, Rashad Omar, US Department of Defense, International Atomic Energy Agency Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

November 2, 2004: George W. Bush Reelected President of US; He Shuffles Some Cabinet Positions President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are re-elected to the US presidency for a second term. In the coming months, some important cabinet officials are replaced. Secretary of State Colin Powell resigns. Condoleezza Rice moves from National Security Adviser to Secretary of State. Her Deputy National Security Adviser Steven Hadley becomes the new National Security Adviser. Attorney General John Ashcroft resigns and is replaced by Alberto Gonzalez. Department of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge resigns and is replaced by Michael Chertoff. [CBS NEWS, 11/30/2004] Entity Tags: Alberto R. Gonzales, Colin Powell, Tom Ridge, Stephen J. Hadley, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Michael Chertoff, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, John Ashcroft Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

January 2005: Rice: North Korea One of World’s ‘Six Outposts of Tyranny’ Incoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during her confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls North Korea one of the world’s six “outposts of tyranny.” (The others are Cuba, Myanmar—which Rice identifies by its old name of Burma—Iran, Belarus, and Zimbabwe.) In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will cite Rice’s characterization as another example of overheated Bush administration rhetoric that makes it all the more difficult to negotiate with the obstinate North Koreans over their nuclear program (see August 2003). [US SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE, 1/18/2005 ; BBC, 12/2007; SCOBLIC, 2008, PP. 243] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. Peter Scoblic Timeline Tags: US International Relations

February 15, 2005: Secretary of State Says Chavez Government is a ‘Negative Force in the Region’ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, “I think we have to view, at this point, the government of Venezuela as a negative force in the region.” [WASHINGTON POST, 3/15/2005, PP. A01] Entity Tags: Robert B. Zoellick, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US-Venezuela (1948-2005)

February 28, 2005: Former 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Gets Job as Condoleezza Rice’s Special Adviser

Philip Zelikow (second from left) with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (left), and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (right). [Source: Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Photos] Philip Zelikow, formerly the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, will serve as a senior adviser for Condoleezza Rice in her new position as secretary of state. His position, counselor of the United States Department of State, is considered equal to undersecretary of state. [RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH, 2/28/2005] Rice says: “Philip and I have worked together for years. I value his counsel and expertise. I appreciate his willingness to take on this assignment.” According to author Philip Shenon, Zelikow tells his new colleagues at the State Department that it is “the sort of job he had always wanted.” [SHENON, 2008, PP. 418] 9/11 victims’ relatives groups had demanded Zelikow’s resignation from the 9/11 Commission, claiming conflict of interest, including being too close to Rice (see March 21, 2004). Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

March 11, 2005: US, EU to Work Diplomatically to Pressure Iran on Nuclear Program The United States and European Union (EU) indicate that they are ready to work together on a diplomatic approach to encourage Iran to give up its nuclear program. Condoleezza Rice says that the US is willing to drop it objections to Iran’s application to the WTO and “consider, on a case-by-case basis, the licensing of spare parts of Iranian civilian aircraft.” Europe, on the other hand, which has been under pressure from the Bush administration to harden its policy toward Iran, says it will have “no choice” but to support the issue being brought up at the UN Security Council if Iran does not discontinue its suspected nuclear weapons program. Up until now, the US and EU have been unable to agree on a single approach to dealing with Iran. [NEW YORK TIMES, 3/12/2005] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

March 19, 2005: US Opposed to Iran-India-Pakistan Gas Pipeline US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the US is opposed to the proposed Iran-India-Pakistan gas pipeline because it would strengthen Iran and thus negatively affect the United States economically. “Our views concerning Iran are very well known by this time, and we have communicated our concerns about gas pipeline cooperation,” she says. [AL JAZEERA, 3/19/2005] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

Summer 2005: Army Supresses Unflattering RAND Report on Iraq The Army suppresses an unclassified report by the RAND Corporation, a federally financed think tank that often does research for the military. The report, entitled “Rebuilding Iraq,” was compiled over 18 months; RAND submitted a classified and an unclassified version, hoping that the dissemination of the second version would spark public debate. However, senior Army officials are disturbed by the report’s broad criticisms of the White House, the Defense Department, and other government agencies, and the Army refuses to allow its publication. A Pentagon official says that the biggest reason for the suppression of the report is the fear of a potential conflict with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The unclassified version of the report will be leaked to the New York Times in February 2008. That version finds problems with almost every organization and agency that played a part in planning for the Iraq invasion. Bush, Rice Let Interdepartmental Squabbles Fester - The report faults President Bush, and by implication his former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, for failing to resolve differences between rival agencies, particularly between the departments of Defense and State. “Throughout the planning process, tensions between the Defense Department and the State Department were never mediated by the president or his staff,” the report finds. Defense Department Unqualified to Lead Reconstruction Effort - The report is also critical of the Defense Department’s being chosen to lead postwar reconstruction, citing that department’s “lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution.” The Bush administration erred in assuming that reconstruction costs would be minimal, and in refusing to countenance differing views, the report says. Complementing that problem was the failure “to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security.” As a result, the report finds, “the US government did not provide strategic policy guidance for postwar Iraq until shortly before major combat operations commenced.” State's Own Planning 'Uneven' and Not 'Actionable' - It questions the “Future of Iraq” study (see April 2002-March 2003), crediting it with identifying important issues, but calling it of “uneven quality” and saying it “did not constitute an actionable plan.” Franks, Rumsfeld Exacerbated Problems - General Tommy Franks, who oversaw the entire military operation in Iraq, suffered from a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the military needed to do to secure postwar Iraq, the study finds. Franks and his boss, Rumsfeld, exacerbated the situation by refusing to send adequate numbers or types of troops into Iraq after the fall of Baghdad. Strengthened Resistance to US Occupation - The poor planning, lack of organization, and interdepartmental dissension together worked to strengthen the Iraqi insurgency. As Iraqi civilians continued to suffer from lack of security and essential services, resentment increased against the “negative effects of the US security presence,” and the US failed to seal Iraq’s borders, foreign and domestic support for the insurgents began to grow. RAND Study Went Too Far Afield, Says Army - In 2008, after the Times receives the unclassified version of the report, Army spokesman Timothy Muchmore explains that the Army rejected the report because it went much farther than it should in examining issues pertinent to the Army. “After carefully reviewing the findings and recommendations of the thorough RAND assessment, the Army determined that the analysts had in some cases taken a broader perspective on the early planning and operational phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom than desired or chartered by the Army,” Muchmore will say. “Some of the RAND findings and recommendations were determined to be outside the purview of the Army and therefore of limited value in informing Army policies, programs and priorities.” Recommendations - The Army needs to rethink its planning towards future wars, the report finds. Most importantly, it needs to consider the postwar needs of a region as much as it considers the strategy and tactics needed to win a war. [NEW YORK TIMES, 2/11/2008] Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, George W. Bush, New York Times, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Thomas Franks, Timothy Muchmore, US Department of State, US Department of the Army, RAND Corporation Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

June 5-7, 2005: India Visits Pakistan to Discuss Oil, Gas Issues A delegation from India visits Pakistan to discuss cooperation in the oil and gas sectors. The 11-person delegation is headed by Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Mani Shankar Aiyar. The two countries agree to establish a working group to review the legal, technical, commercial, and financial parameters of the proposed Iran-India-Pakistan gas pipeline (see 1993 and January 27, 2003) that would transport natural gas 2,775 km from Iran to India via Pakistan. They plan to start the project by December 31, 2005. [ISLAMIC REPUBLIC NEWS AGENCY, 6/5/2005; TRIBUNE (CHANDIGARH), 6/5/2005] At a press conference on June 6, Aiyar is asked about US concerns expressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in March (see March 19, 2005) that the pipeline would strengthen Iran. Aiyar responds that construction of the pipeline is contigent only upon an agreement being made between India and Pakistan. [TRIBUNE (CHANDIGARH), 6/5/2005] India and Pakistan also discuss the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline (see January 18, 2005), which they agree should extend to India. [TRIBUNE (CHANDIGARH), 6/5/2005; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/5/2005] The delegation also explores the possibility of exporting Indian diesel to Pakistan. [ISLAMIC REPUBLIC NEWS AGENCY, 6/5/2005] Entity Tags: Mani Shankar Aiyar, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

September 10, 2005: Rice Wants China, Russia, India to Join in Sanctions Against Iran During a news conference in Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urges China, Russia, and India to support US threats of imposing sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programs. Iran needs to get a “unified message,” she says. “I think that after the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) report a couple of days ago, it is clear that Iran is not living up to its obligations, and so UN Security Council referral seems to be a reasonable option.” [US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 9/9/2005; BBC, 9/10/2005] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, International Atomic Energy Agency Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

October 2005: Former Powell Aide Calls for Legislation to Reform Inter-Agency and National Security Decision Making Processes; Strongly Criticizes Neocons in Bush Administration Speaking at the New America Foundation, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, argues that power in Washington has become so concentrated, and the inter-agency processes within the Federal government so degraded, that the government is no longer capable of responding competently to threatening events—whether such events are natural disasters or international conflicts. He describes how successive administrations over the last five decades have damaged the national security decision-making process and warns that new legislation is desperately needed to force transparency on the process and restore checks and balances within the federal bureaucracy. The process has hit a nadir with the Bush administration, he says, whose secrecy and disregard for inter-agency processes has resulted in disastrous policies, such as those toward Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, and the policies that resulted in the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. “Fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret,” he says. “You don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it.” He says, “[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, and perturbations in the national-security [policy-making] process.” This approach to government also contributed to the failures in responding to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn’t have to suffer, domestic and international decisions, should not be made in a secret way.” His speech includes a very direct and open attack on the Bush administration. “What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.” Wilkerson contrasts the current president with his father, George H.W. Bush, “one of the finest presidents we have ever had,” who, in Wilkerson’s opinion, understood how to make foreign policy work. Wilkerson likens George W. Bush’s brand of diplomacy to “cowboyism” and notes that he was unable to persuade US allies to stand behind his policies because “it’s hard to sell shit.” He explains that Bush is “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either. There’s a vast difference between the way George H. W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.” Wilkerson lays the blame for the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse directly at the feet of the younger Bush and his top officials, whom Wilkerson says gave tacit approval to soldiers to abuse detainees. As for Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser and now Powell’s successor at the State Department, she was and is “part of the problem.” Instead of ensuring that Bush received the best possible advice even if it was not what Bush wanted to hear, Rice “would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.” Wilkerson also blames the fracturing and demoralization of the US military on Bush and his officials. Officers “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam,” he says, “and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.” Wilkerson is particularly scathing in his assessment of the Pentagon’s supervisor of the OSP, Douglas Feith, one of the original members of the Cabal. Asked if he agrees with General Tommy Franks’s assessment of Feith as the “f_cking stupidest guy on the planet.” Wilkerson says, “Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. And yet, after the [Pentagon is given] control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere.…That’s telling you how decisions were made and…how things got accomplished.” [AMERICAN STRATEGY PROGRAM, 10/19/2005; FINANCIAL TIMES, 10/20/2005; INTER PRESS SERVICE, 10/20/2005; SALON, 10/27/2005] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lawrence Wilkerson, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George Herbert Walker Bush Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

January 11, 2006: Rice: US Is Seeking ‘a New Strategic Alignment in the Middle East’ Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Condoleezza Rice says that the US is seeking to encourage “a new strategic alignment” that is emerging in the Middle East between “responsible” leaders on the one side, and extremists on the other. She says the US is working with Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and certain reformist leaders in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories “to empower democratic and other responsible leaders across the region.” (Notably, only two of these countries—Turkey and Israel—have democratic forms of governments) Explaining the US’s interest in the Middle East, she says: “The security of this region is an enduring vital interest for the United States. America’s presence in this part of the world contributes significantly to its stability and success.” [US CONGRESS, 1/11/2007 ] According to a later article by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh, the policy she is describing is actually aimed at rolling back the influence that Iran has gained since the US invasion of Iraq (see Late 2006). Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

Spring 2006: US Leadership Surprised about Strong Taliban Offensive, Despite Warnings

Ronald Neumann. [Source: US State Department] The Taliban carry out their largest offensive in Afghanistan since 2001. Suicide bombings increase four-fold to 141 and roadside bombings double (see 2004-2007). 191 US and NATO soldiers die in 2006, making it nearly as statistically dangerous to fight in Afghanistan as in Iraq. But US assistance to Afghanistan drops 38 percent from $4.3 billion in 2005 to $3.1 billion in 2006. Ronald Neumann, US ambassador to Afghanistan, argued against the cut. He also warns in a February 2006 cable to his superiors that the Taliban is planning a strong spring offensive. Afghan president Hamid Karzai and some US military officials make similar warnings. But despite such warnings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will later say, “There was no doubt that people were surprised that the Taliban was able to regroup and come back in a large, well-organized force.” The US will boost aid to $9 billion in 2007 in response to the offensive. [NEW YORK TIMES, 8/12/2007] Entity Tags: Hamid Karzai, Taliban, Ronald Neumann, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan

March 31-April 1, 2006: Rice: Strategy in Iraq Correct, but US Made ‘Thousands’ of ‘Tactical Errors’ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admits that the US has committed “thousands” of “tactical errors in Iraq,” but made “the right strategic decision” to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. “This could have gone that way, or that could have gone this way,” she says of the war and the subsequent occupation. “I am quite certain there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration,” she says. “I know we’ve made tactical errors—thousands of them, I’m sure. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions. I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision, that Saddam [Hussein] had been a threat to the international community long enough.” Retired General 'Outraged' - Retired General Greg Newbold calls Rice’s statement “an outrage,” and says, “It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting” (see April 9, 2006). [BBC, 3/31/2006; CNN, 4/1/2006] Rice Backpedals - When asked to give specific examples of those “tactical mistakes,” Rice backpedals, saying: “First of all, I meant it figuratively, not literally. Let me be very clear about that. I wasn’t sitting around counting.… The point I was making… is that, of course, if you’ve ever made decisions, you’ve undoubtedly made mistakes. The important thing is to get the big strategic decisions right, and that I am confident that the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and give the Iraqi people an opportunity for peace and for democracy is the right decision.… The other point I was making to the questioner is that I’m enough of a historian to know that things that looked brilliant at the moment turn out in historical perspective to be mistakes, and the things that look like mistakes turn out to have been right decisions.” [CNN, 4/1/2006] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Gregory Newbold, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

April 5, 2006: Court Filings Show Cheney, Bush Led Smear Campaign against Wilson Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald files a brief with the court that states unequivocally that the White House orchestrated an attempt to besmirch the character and integrity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, and October 1, 2003). The New York Times describes Wilson as “the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration’s case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.” Bush, Cheney at Heart of Smear Campaign - Fitzgerald’s court filing places President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney directly at the center of the controversy, which erupted when conservative columnist Robert Novak used information from White House sources to “out” Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a covert CIA agent (see July 14, 2003). According to Fitzgerald, the White House engaged in “a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson.” The filing concludes, “It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish Wilson.’” Fitzgerald’s portrait of events is at odds with the Bush administration’s narrative, which attempts to portray Wilson as a minor figure whose criticism of the Iraq invasion comes from his personal and political agenda. Fitzgerald is preparing to turn over to the defense lawyers for Lewis Libby some 1,400 pages of handwritten notes—some presumably by Libby himself—that should bolster Fitzgerald’s assertion. Fitzgerald will file papers in support of his assertion that Bush ordered the selective disclosure of parts of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (see October 1, 2002) as part of the White House’s attempt to discredit Wilson. Fitzgerald: Cheney Headed Campaign - Fitzgerald views Cheney, not Bush, as being at what the Times calls “the epicenter of concern about Mr. Wilson.” Fitzgerald notes that Wilson’s op-ed in the New York Times (see July 6, 2003) “was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq.… Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson’s wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson’s credibility if Mr. Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism.” Neither Bush’s then-National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, nor Rice’s deputy and eventual successor, Stephen Hadley, knew of the information declassification, Libby indicates. [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 4/5/2006 ; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/7/2006; NEW YORK TIMES, 4/11/2006; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 6/14/2006; WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] Bush Authorized Leak of Classified Intelligence - Fitzgerald’s filing also states that, according to Libby’s earlier testimony (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), Bush directly authorized the leak of classified intelligence to reporters as part of the Wilson smear campaign (see April 5, 2006). Democrats Dismayed at Allegations of Bush Involvement - Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) says: “After the CIA leak controversy broke three years ago, President Bush said, ‘I’d like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information.’ Now we find out that the president himself was ordering leaks of classified information.… It’s time for the president to come clean with the American people.” And in a letter to Bush, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, writes in part, “Two recent revelations raise grave new questions about whether you, the vice president and your top advisors have engaged in a systematic abuse of the national security classification process for political purposes.” [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/7/2006] Entity Tags: Frank R. Lautenberg, George W. Bush, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Office of the Vice President, Joseph C. Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Henry A. Waxman, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson, Stephen J. Hadley Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

April 9, 2006: Retired General: Iraq War Caused by ‘Ignorant’ Civilian ‘Zealots’ in White House, Pentagon Retired Marine Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, until October 2002 the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is another in a small but vocal group of current and retired generals voicing public dissent against the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Newbold writes an op-ed for Time magazine, and leads off by saying that after Vietnam, he and other career military officers determined never again to “stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it.” But, Newbold writes, it happened again. He takes responsibility for his own actions in planning for the invasion of Iraq, but notes that “[i]nside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots’ rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat—al-Qaeda.” Newbold retired from the military in late 2002, “in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11’s tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I’ve been silent long enough.” The cost of the Bush administration’s “flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood,” he writes, and that blood debt drives him to speak out. A Justifiable War - Invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do, Newbold says, to take on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And though invading Iraq was unnecessary and wrong, he says, the US cannot now just withdraw precipitously: “It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists’ message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts. If, however, the Iraqis prove unable to govern, and there is open civil war, then I am prepared to change my position.” Outrage - Newbold writes of his deep anger at the words of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently said that “we” made the “right strategic decisions,” but made thousands of “tactical errors” (see March 31-April 1, 2006). Newbold calls that statement “an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.” Instead, he writes: “What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures.… My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.” Many of the Pentagon’s highest-ranking generals bear their own blame, Newbold writes, in “act[ing] timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military’s effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction.” Some few actually believed the rationale for war, others were intimidated, and many believed that their sense of duty and obedience precluded their speaking out. “The consequence of the military’s quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.” Many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, “defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight.” Many media reporters, editors, and pundits ignored the warnings and instead played up the rationale for war. New Visions, New Strategies - The first thing to do, says Newbold, is to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld along with “many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach.” The US owes their troops, living and dead, a debt of gratitude and the responsibility to “construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it.” More generals and others in positions of leadership need to speak out, Newbold concludes, and make sure that we as a nation are not “fooled again.” [TIME, 4/9/2006] Entity Tags: Gregory Newbold, Bush administration, Al-Qaeda, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Taliban Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

August 23, 2006: Republican Intelligence Report on Iran’s Nuclear Program Is Fundamentally False

Peter Hoekstra. [Source: Public domain] The House Intelligence Committee, led by Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), releases a 29-page report entitled “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States” that blasts the CIA and other US intelligence agencies for lacking “the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments” on Iran’s nuclear program, its intentions, or its ties to terrorism. [HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, 8/23/2006] Democrats Excluded From Report - The report is generated strictly by the Republicans on the committee; input from Democratic members was quite limited. The author of the report is ex-CIA officer Frederick Fleitz, a former special assistant to Undersecretary of Defense John Bolton and a hardliner on Iran. Not surprisingly, Fleitz’s report fully supports the Bush administration’s position that Iran is moving aggressively to acquire nuclear weapons, and thusly poses an significant threat to the US. It also claims that the US intelligence community has not tried to collect or collate evidence to prove Fleitz’s assertion that Iran, a majority-Shi’ite nation, has close and sinister ties to al-Qaeda, a Sunni organization, as well as some responsibility for the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Fleitz and his researchers used nothing more than publicly available documents for his report, and did not interview any intelligence officials. Hoesktra, who publicly releases the report before it is approved by the full committee, says his purpose is to avoid the intelligence “mistakes” that led the US to conclude that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. It is widely believed that Hoekstra’s decision to release the report is part of a larger effort by the Bush administration to pressure Iran to suspend its nuclear program, a push supported by few US allies. Democrats on the committee have little confidence that the report is complete and accurate; ranking subcommittee member Rush Holt (D-NJ) says the report is not “prepared and reviewed in a way that we can rely on.” [WASHINGTON POST, 8/24/2006] Cherrypicking - The report will never be voted on or discussed by the entire committee, in essence short-circuiting Democrats from the review and approval process. Ranking member Jane Harman (D-CA) says the report “took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire—and the Intelligence Community’s assessments as more certain—than they are.” It is not long before the report is thoroughly debunked. Further analysis shows the report to be riddled with errors; additionally, it fails to include key information, mostly from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that disproves the report’s claims about Iran’s nuclear program. When the report is officially presented in September 2006, IAEA officials and others will term the report “outrageous and dishonest,” and provide evidence refuting its major claims (see September 14, 2006). Gary Sick, an Iran expert and a former National Security Council under Jimmy Carter, notes that the report’s claim that Iran has “the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East” entirely ignores the far larger arsenals possessed by Israel and Saudi Arabia. “If you are going to take on the entire US intelligence community, it is a very good idea to at least get your basic facts straight,” Sick says. “It is a sloppy attempt to lay the ground for another ‘slam-dunk’ judgement and a potential rush to war. It deserves to be recognized for what it is.” David Albright agrees: “This is like prewar Iraq all over again.” Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, says, “You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that’s cherry-picked and a report that trashes the [IAEA] inspectors.” Weeks after the November 2006 elections, the CIA will report that it can find no evidence supporting Fleitz’s contention that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. [INTER PRESS SERVICE, 8/25/2006; WASHINGTON POST, 9/14/2006; VANITY FAIR, 3/2007] An Attempt to Undermine Rice and Diplomatic Outreach? - Many committee Democrats believe that the report is an attempt by hardline Republicans to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions. Bolton, Fleitz, and others oppose any diplomacy or discussion with Iran. Bolton is now the US ambassador to the UN; he and Fleitz worked diligently during President Bush’s first term to undermine the efforts of Rice’s predecessor, Colin Powell, to engage Iran, North Korea, and Syria in diplomatic talks. Many Washington neoconservatives have denounced the Bush administration’s tentative move towards diplomatic talks with Iran as nothing more than “appeasement.” (Perhaps in the same vein, Fleitz is now working on a similar report on North Korea’s weapons program; a draft leaked to the Washington Post contains allegations about the North Korean program that also cannot be substantiated.) [INTER PRESS SERVICE, 8/25/2006; WASHINGTON POST, 9/14/2006] 'Unusually Slick' Hoax - Former CIA official Ray McGovern calls the report an “unusually slick” hoax that is nothing more than an attempt to frighten Congress and the American people into supporting the Bush administration’s more aggressive posture towards Iran. McGovern notes that in recent weeks Hoekstra told a Fox News audience that weapons of mass destruction were indeed found in Iraq—“We were right all the time!”—and observes that the entire report is a calculated public relations effort based on overzealous falsehoods and not on verifiable fact. The cover of the report depicts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad giving a suspiciously Nazi-like salute, and the first page repeats Ahmadinejad’s assertion that Israel “must be wiped off the face of the map.” He also notes that Fleitz, whom he describes as Bolton’s “chief enforcer” when Bolton was at the State Department, once told State Department intelligence analysts Christian Westermann that it was “a political judgment as to how to interpret” data on Cuba’s biological weapons program (a program that only existed in Bolton’s imagination) and that the intelligence community “should do as we asked” in making its reports. McGovern concludes, “Hoekstra’s release of this paper is another sign pointing in the direction of a US attack on Iran. Tehran is now being blamed not only for inciting Hezbollah but also for sending improvised explosive devices [IEDs] into Iraq to kill or maim US forces. There is yet another, if more subtle, disquieting note about the paper. It bears the earmarks of a rushed job, with very little editorial scrubbing.… It seems to me possible that the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal told Hoekstra to get the paper out sooner rather than later, as an aid to Americans in ‘recognizing Iran as a strategic threat.’” [ANTIWAR.COM, 8/26/2007] Replay of Flawed Iraqi Intelligence - Many observers agree with McGovern that the report is a replay of the dangerously flawed intelligence estimates that pushed Congress to approve military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Gary Sick goes even further back to draw a comparison between Hoekstra’s report and the mid-1970s effort by Ford aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s so-called “Team B” to provide an “alternative” intelligence assessment on the threat posed by the then-Soviet Union. The report “is really intended as a sort of Team B report of what at least one [Congressional] staffer believes the intelligence community should be reporting on Iran.” [INTER PRESS SERVICE, 8/25/2006] Author and national security expert John Prados takes an even grimmer view: “The fact that this act has been perpetrated by a congressional committee whose job it is to oversee US intelligence is further evidence that intelligence oversight has become part of the problem, not the solution.” [TOM PAINE (.COM), 8/25/2006] Entity Tags: John Prados, John R. Bolton, Mohamed ElBaradei, National Security Council, Ray McGovern, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Jane Harman, Saddam Hussein, Rush Holt, Peter Hoekstra, James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Institute for Science and International Security, Condoleezza Rice, David Albright, Colin Powell, Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Christian Westermann, International Atomic Energy Agency, Frederick Fleitz, Gerald Rudolph Ford, House Intelligence Committee, Gary G. Sick, Donald Rumsfeld, Hezbollah Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

September 15-27, 2006: Zelikow Resigns from State Department after Neocons Attack His Advocacy for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Philip Zelikow, who is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s closest aide, gives a speech asserting that the US must seriously address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Otherwise, Zelikow says, the US may have trouble securing the support of Arab moderates and Europeans in dealing with the Middle East. The speech seems to be the result of a long discussion of the topic between Rice and former Bush adviser Brent Scowcroft (see October 2004). The counterattack from the neoconservatives in Vice President Cheney’s office, who want nothing to do with any settlements with the Palestinians, is immediate and fierce. Cheney’s office issues harsh condemnations of Zelikow, and neoconservative-friendly newspapers such as the Jerusalem Post and the New York Sun publish news reports designed to undermine Zelikow’s message. Rice refuses to stand up to Cheney on behalf of Zelikow, and the State Department officially repudiates Zelikow’s remarks. Zelikow resigns his post. The neoconservatives’ views on the Israeli-Palestinian issue remain the guiding force behind the Bush administration’s Middle East policies. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 8] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Brent Scowcroft, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, US Department of State, Philip Zelikow, Office of the Vice President Timeline Tags: US International Relations

September 29, 2006: New Book Causes Controversy Over Previously Unmentioned 9/11 Warning

Original cover to Woodward’s ‘State of Denial.’ [Source: Barnes and Noble] Journalist Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial is released. While the book focuses mainly on politics regarding the Iraq war, it also describes an urgent warning that then-CIA Director George Tenet gave to Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser at the time, and other White House officials on July 10, 2001 (see July 10, 2001). [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/29/2006; NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 9/29/2006; WASHINGTON POST, 10/1/2006] This warning had been mentioned in passing in a 2002 Time magazine article, but it had escaped widespread attention until Woodward’s book. [TIME, 8/4/2002] The meeting is particularly controversial because neither the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry nor the 9/11 Commission mentioned in it in their final reports. The 9/11 Commission had learned about it from Tenet in early 2004 (see January 28, 2004). Rice and a number of 9/11 Commissioners deny knowing about the July meeting for several days, until documentation surfaces in the media detailing the meeting and Tenet’s testimony to the commission (see October 1-2, 2006 and September 30-October 3, 2006). Details about the July meeting and surrounding controversies are reported on by the mainstream media for about a week, but there are no articles on it in any prominent newspaper after October 3, 2006. On October 5, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) formally asks Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for hearings about the revelations in Woodward’s book, including controversies surrounding the July meeting. Kerry says in a letter to Lugar, “It is necessary to understand the mistakes of the past in order to ensure they are not repeated, and having testimony from the parties under oath will help to sharpen recollections and clarify the exact nature of this important meeting.” However, no hearings take place. [KERRY, 10/5/2006] Entity Tags: Bob Woodward, Condoleezza Rice, Bob Kerry, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

September 30-October 3, 2006: 9/11 Commissioners Claim to Be Furious They Were Not Told of July 2001 Warning, When In Fact They Were In late September 2006, a new book by Bob Woodward reveals that CIA Director Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black gave National Security Adviser Rice their most urgent warning about a likely upcoming al-Qaeda attack (see July 10, 2001 and September 29, 2006). Tenet detailed this meeting to the 9/11 Commission in early 2004 (see January 28, 2004), but it was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission’s final report later that year. According to the Washington Post, “Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork on the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/1/2006] The 9/11 Commissioners initially vigorously deny that they were not told about the meeting. For instance, 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick says she checked with commission staff who told her they were never told about a meeting on that date. She says, “We didn’t know about the meeting itself. I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/30/2006] Commissioner Tim Roemer says, “None of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this. I’m deeply disturbed by this. I’m furious.” Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste says the meeting “was never mentioned to us.” Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, says the commissioners and their staff had heard nothing in their private interviews with Tenet and Black to suggest that they made such a dire presentation to Rice. “If we had heard something that drew our attention to this meeting, it would have been a huge thing.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/2/2006] However, on October 3, 2006, a transcript of Tenet’s private testimony to the 9/11 Commission is leaked to reporters and clearly shows that Tenet did warn Rice of an imminent al-Qaeda threat on July 10, 2001. Ben-Veniste, who attended the meeting along with Zelikow and other staff members, now confirms the meeting did take place and claims to recall details of it, even though he, Zelikow, and other 9/11 Commissioners had denied the existence of the meeting as recently as the day before. In the transcript, Tenet says “the system was blinking red” at the time. This statement becomes a chapter title in the 9/11 Commission’s final report but the report, which normally has detailed footnotes, does not make it clear when Tenet said it. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/3/2006] Zelikow had close ties to Rice before joining the 9/11 Commission, having co-written a book with her (see March 21, 2004), and became one of her key aides after the commission disbanded (see February 28, 2005). Zelikow does not respond to requests for comments after Tenet’s transcript surfaces. [MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS, 10/2/2006; WASHINGTON POST, 10/3/2006] Entity Tags: Richard Ben-Veniste, Tim Roemer, Jamie Gorelick, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, Cofer Black Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

October 1-2, 2006: Condoleezza Rice Denies Attendance in Urgent Pre-9/11 Al-Qaeda Briefing, but State Department Confirms She Was There Secretary of State Rice says that she does not recall the meeting on July 10, 2001, when CIA Director Tenet and other officials briefed her about the al-Qaeda threat (see July 10, 2001). “What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10/2/2006] Rice says she has no recollection of what she variously calls “the supposed meeting” and “the emergency so-called meeting.” [EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 10/1/2006; MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS, 10/2/2006] The Washington Post comments that “Rice added to the confusion… by strongly suggesting that the meeting may never have occurred at all—even though administration officials had conceded for several days that it had.” Hours after Rice’s latest denial, the State Department confirms that documents show Rice did attend such a meeting on that date. However, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack then says, “The briefing was a summary of the threat reporting from the previous weeks. There was nothing new.” The Washington Post notes that when it was pointed out to McCormack that Rice asked for the briefing to be shown to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft (see July 11-17, 2001), “McCormack was unable to explain why Rice felt the briefing should be repeated if it did not include new material.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/3/2006] Entity Tags: John Ashcroft, Sean McCormack, Condoleezza Rice, US Department of State, Al-Qaeda, George J. Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

October 20, 2006: North Korean Dictator Apologizes for Nuclear Tests, Offers to Rejoin Negotiations In an abrupt reversal, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il apologizes for his country’s nuclear test (see October 9, 2006). He reportedly tells a Chinese delegation that he regrets the test, denies any plans for further tests (see October 11, 2006), and says he is willing for North Korea to resume its participation in international nuclear negotiations if the US agrees not to “financially isolate” his country. For their part, US State Department officials say they doubt Kim made any such statements. But the US is willing to rejoin negotiations. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, “The Chinese are emphasizing the need for six-party talks to begin again and for the North to re-engage in the talks.” North Korea “urged us to be open to returning to those talks without preconditions, which for us is not difficult.” [MSNBC, 10/20/2006] Entity Tags: US Department of State, Condoleezza Rice, Kim Jong Il Timeline Tags: US International Relations

November 6-December 18, 2006: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Resigns after Midterm Elections; Replaced by Robert Gates

Rumsfeld leaving the Defense Department. [Source: Boston Globe] Donald Rumsfeld resigns as US defense secretary. On November 6, he writes a letter telling President Bush of his resignation. Bush reads the letter the next day, which is also the date for midterm elections in the US, in which the Democratic Party wins majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Bush publicly announces the resignation the next day. No explanation is given for the delay in making the announcement. [REUTERS, 8/15/2007] Replaced by Gates - Rumsfeld is formally replaced by Robert Gates on December 18, 2006. According to a retired general who worked closely with the first Bush administration, the Gates nomination means that George H.W. Bush, his close political advisers—Brent Scowcroft, James Baker—and the current President Bush are saying that “winning the 2008 election is more important than any individual. The issue for them is how to preserve the Republican agenda. The Old Guard wants to isolate Cheney and give their girl, Condoleezza Rice, a chance to perform.” It takes Scowcroft, Baker, and the elder Bush working together to oppose Cheney, the general says. “One guy can’t do it.” Other sources close to the Bush family say that the choice of Gates to replace Rumsfeld is more complex than the general describes, and any “victory” by the “Old Guard” may be illusory. A former senior intelligence official asks rhetorically: “A week before the election, the Republicans were saying that a Democratic victory was the seed of American retreat, and now Bush and Cheney are going to change their national security policies? Cheney knew this was coming. Dropping Rummy after the election looked like a conciliatory move—‘You’re right, Democrats. We got a new guy and we’re looking at all the options. Nothing is ruled out.’” In reality, the former official says, Gates is being brought in to give the White House the credibility it needs in continuing its policies towards Iran and Iraq. New Approach towards Iran? - Gates also has more credibility with Congress than Rumsfeld, a valuable asset if Gates needs to tell Congress that Iran’s nuclear program poses an imminent threat. “He’s not the guy who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he’ll be taken seriously by Congress.” Joseph Cirincione, a national security director for the Center for American Progress, warns: “Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there [in the White House] and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell—the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it.” [NEW YORKER, 11/27/2006] Entity Tags: Robert M. Gates, Joseph Cirincione, Brent Scowcroft, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, James A. Baker, George Herbert Walker Bush, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, US Military, Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation, Domestic Propaganda

Late November 2006: Bush Middle East Policies Classic Example of ‘Failure Forward,’ Says Pentagon Consultant An unnamed Pentagon consultant describes the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq and Iran as “a classic case of ‘failure forward.’” He adds: “They believe that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq—like doubling your bet. It would be an attempt to revive the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East by creating one new model state.” In the light of belligerent statements made by several administration officials hostile to the current regime in Iran, he also says: “More and more people see the weakening of Iran as the only way to save Iraq.… [T]he goal in Iran is not regime change but a strike that will send a signal that America still can accomplish its goals. Even if it does not destroy Iran’s nuclear network, there are many who think that thirty-six hours of bombing is the only way to remind the Iranians of the very high cost of going forward with the bomb—and of supporting Moqtada al-Sadr and his pro-Iran element in Iraq.” (Note: al-Sadr’s closeness to Iran is a matter of dispute.) [NEW YORKER, 11/27/2006] Entity Tags: US Department of State, US Department of Defense, Moqtada al-Sadr, David Wurmser, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

December 2006: Iraq Study Group Final Report Recommends Urgent Changes to Iraq’s Oil Industry; Report Rejected by Bush

Robert Gates. [Source: US Defense Department] In its final report, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) recommends significant changes to Iraq’s oil industry. The report’s 63rd recommendation states that the US should “assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise” and “encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies.” The recommendation also says the US should “provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law.” [IRAQ STUDY GROUP, 2006, PP. 57 ] The report makes a number of recommendations about the US occupation of Iraq, including hints that the US should consider moving towards a tactical withdrawal of forces from that beleaguered nation. President Bush’s reaction to the report is best summed up by his term for the report: a “flaming turd.” Bush’s scatological reaction does not bode well for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s own hopes that the administration will use the ISG report as a template for revising its approach to Iraq. This does not happen. Instead, Vice President Dick Cheney organizes a neoconservative counter to the ISG’s recommendations, led by the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan. Kagan and his partner, retired general Jack Keane, quickly formulate a plan to dramatically escalate the number of US troops in Iraq, an operation quickly termed “the surge” (see January 10, 2007). The only element of the ISG report that is implemented in the Bush administration’s operations in Iraq is the label “a new way forward,” a moniker appropriated for the surge of troops. Administration officials such as Rice and the new defense secretary, Robert Gates, quickly learn to swallow their objections and get behind Bush’s new, aggressive strategy; military commanders who continue to support elements of the ISG recommendations, including CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid and ground commander General George Casey, are either forced into retirement (Abizaid) or shuttled into a less directly influential position (Casey). [SALON, 1/10/2007] Entity Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Condoleezza Rice, Fred Kagan, Iraq Study Group, Robert M. Gates, Jack Keane, George Casey, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, John P. Abizaid Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation

January 5, 2007: Bush Shakes Up Iraq Advisory Team

Ryan Crocker [Source: CBC] In preparation for his expected announcement of a new “surge” of 21,500 combat troops for Iraq (see January 10, 2007), President Bush puts together a new team of advisers and officials to oversee his administration’s Iraq policy. The new team includes: Zalmay Khalilzad as the ambassador to the United Nations. Khalilzad, the only Middle East native in a senior position in the administration, is the former ambassador to both Afghanistan and Iraq (see November 2003), a well-known neoconservative who formerly held a position with the oil corporation Unocal. He will replace interim ambassador John Bolton, an abrasive neoconservative who could never win confirmation in the post from the US Senate. Ryan Crocker is the leading candidate to replace Khalilzad as the US ambassador to Iraq. Crocker, who speaks fluent Arabic, is currently the ambassador to Pakistan. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte will become the top deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Negroponte, a controversial veteran of US foreign operations in Latin America and the Middle East, has also served as the US ambassador to Iraq. Rice is widely viewed as in dire need of a savvy, experienced deputy who can assist her both in handling the sprawling State Department bureaucracy, and focus her efforts to handle diplomatic efforts in the Middle East as well as in other regions. Retired Admiral Mike McConnell, who headed the National Security Agency under former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, will replace Negroponte as DNI. Admiral William Fallon, head of the US Pacific Command, will replace General John Abizaid as commander of the US forces in the Middle East. Abizaid has drawn media attention in recent months for his muted criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraqi policies. Army General David Petraeus will replace General George Casey as the chief military commander in Iraq. Petraeus once headed the effort to train Iraqi security forces. Like Abizaid, Casey has been skeptical about the need for more US forces in Iraq. [USA TODAY, 1/5/2007; CBS NEWS, 1/5/2007] Entity Tags: William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Unocal, United Nations, William Fallon, Ryan C. Crocker, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Casey, David Petraeus, John Negroponte, John P. Abizaid, George W. Bush, Mike McConnell, Condoleezza Rice, US Department of State Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

January 10, 2007: President Bush Announces Deployment of Additional Aircraft Carrier to Persian Gulf President George W. Bush adopts more confrontational language with regard to Iran and alleges that Iran is working against US interests in Iraq. In an address to the nation, he says, “We will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” The president announces the decision to send another strike group of ships (i.e., an aircraft carrier and companion ships) to the Persian Gulf. Patriot missiles will also be sent to the region for the security of US allies there, he says. [US PRESIDENT, 1/15/2007 ] According to an article published in the New York Times the next day, US officials hold that these actions are not indicative of a coming attack on Iran. However, the same officials say that members of the administration, such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, have determined that the United States is finished with diplomatic attempts to deal with Iran, unless Iran makes a significant change in its behavior. Bush and other US officials claim that Iran, particularly the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds force, has helped train Iraqi Shiite militias how to attack US troops in Iraq. Military officials believe that “shaped charges,” a type of roadside bomb that has been increasingly used against troops, are made in Iran. General Michael V. Hayden, CIA Director, recently told Congress that he has the “zeal of a convert” and now strongly believes that Iran is contributing to the death toll of US soldiers in Iraq. [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/11/2007] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Iran, Michael Hayden Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

January 10, 2007: CIA Provides Further Details of Memos Authorizing Detention, Interrogation in ‘Black Sites’ The CIA continues to fight an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit demanding that it turn over three key memos authorizing the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists at secret overseas “black sites” (see November 10, 2006). Court documents filed by the agency cite national security concerns for keeping the documents hidden from public scrutiny. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh says: “The CIA’s declaration uses national security as a pretext for withholding evidence that high-level government officials in all likelihood authorized abusive techniques that amount to torture. This declaration is especially disturbing because it suggests that unlawful interrogation techniques cleared by the Justice Department for use by the CIA still remain in effect. The American public has a right to know how the government is treating its prisoners.” One document is a lengthy presidential order described by the CIA as a “14-page memorandum dated 17 September 2001 from President Bush to the director of the CIA pertaining to the CIA’s authorization to detain terrorists” (see September 17, 2001). Twelve of the 14 pages are “a notification memorandum” from the president to the National Security Council regarding a “clandestine intelligence activity.” ACLU officials say this statement “raises questions regarding the extent to which Condoleezza Rice was involved in establishing the CIA detention program as national security adviser.” The CIA declares in the brief that the presidential document is so “Top Secret” that NSC officials created a “special access program” governing access to it. The brief states that “the name of the special access program is itself classified SECRET,” meaning that the CIA believes that the disclosure of the program’s name “could be expected to result in serious danger to the nation’s security.” The other two documents are, respectively, an August 1, 2002 Justice Department memo “advising the CIA regarding interrogation methods it may use against al-Qaeda members” (see August 1, 2002), and an apparent “draft” version of the August 1 memo prepared for White House counsel Alberto Gonzales by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, the then-head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The draft memo apparently contends that physical abuse only equates to torture under US law if it inflicts pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” The memo was later rescinded (see December 2003-June 2004). The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer says: “Through these memos, the president and Office of Legal Counsel created a legal framework that was specifically intended to allow the CIA to violate both US and international law. While national security sometimes requires secrecy, it is increasingly clear that these documents are being kept secret not for national security reasons but for political ones.” [AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 1/10/2007] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Alberto R. Gonzales, American Civil Liberties Union, Amrit Singh, National Security Council, Office of Legal Counsel, Condoleezza Rice, Jay S. Bybee, Jameel Jaffer, US Department of Justice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

January 11, 2007: US Troops Capture Iranian Officials in Kurdish Iraq

Irbil’s Iranian Liaison Office. [Source: Yahya Ahmed / Associated Press] US forces carry out two raids inside Iraq, capturing five Iranians as well as a large amount of documentary and computer data. Both raids are inside the Kurdish city of Irbil. One raid is at the Iranian Liaison Office, which is used as a local headquarters by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards; according to Iranian sources, five US helicopters land on the roof of the office building around 4 a.m. local time, and US soldiers break down doors, snatch up the five Iranians, and take away boxes of documents and computer equipment. The second raid, at the Irbil airport, ends differently, with US troops finding themselves confronting unfriendly Kurdish troops. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says, “A massacre was avoided at the last minute.” No Iranians are detained as part of the airport raid. The two raids are part of a new US intelligence and military operation launched in December 2006 against Iranians allegedly providing assistance to Iraqi Shi’ite insurgents. Iran’s al-Quds Brigade, which provides funding and military training to other Shi’ite revolutionary groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, is the primary target of the US offensive. “Throughout Iraq, operations are currently ongoing against individuals suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraqi and Coalition forces,” the headquarters of the US-led Multi-National Force-Iraq says in a prepared statement. The month before, two senior Iranians of al-Quds, Brigadier General Mohsen Chirazi and Colonel Abu Amad Davari, were captured in similar raids (see December 21-29, 2006), and freed shortly thereafter. [ALALAM NEWS, 1/11/2007; WASHINGTON POST, 1/12/2007; NEWSWIRE, 1/12/2007] US officials dismiss the raids as “routine.” [REUTERS, 1/11/2007] Months later, a Kurdish government official says that the real target of the raids was not the Iranian liaison officials, but commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who were openly visiting Kurdish government officials. The commanders were not captured (see Early April, 2007). [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/6/2007] Rhetorical Escalation - Bush says that he has ordered US forces to “seek out and destroy the networks” arming and training US enemies, an indirect reference to Iran (see January 10, 2007). Joining Bush in the rhetorical escalation is General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who charges that Iran is “complicit” in providing weapons designed to kill American troops: “We will do all we need to do to defend our troops in Iraq by going after the entire network regardless of where those people come from.” The Iranian Liaison Office was opened with the approval of the Iraqi Kurds, who maintain a near-autonomous region in northern Iraq with the support of the US. Iran wants to upgrade the office to a formal consulate. US forces did not inform their Iraqi allies of the raids on the office beforehand; the raids may well disrupt Kurdish and Iraqi government attempts to deepen ties with the Iranian government. “This is a very, very dangerous thing,” says Zebari. The Iranian government has protested the raids, and the capture of their five officials, through Iraqi and Swiss diplomats to the United Nations (Switzerland represents US interests in Iran). Tehran insists that all five captured Iranians are diplomats, a claim rejected by US and Iraqi officials. [WASHINGTON POST, 1/12/2007] The State Department will assert, without presenting proof, that the Iranians are part of a much larger effort by Iran to support the Iraqi Shi’ite militias and insurgents. Apparently the United States’ charges that the Iranians are not diplomats rest on a bureaucratic foible: the five Iranians had applied for diplomatic accreditation, but their paperwork had not been fully processed. The Kurdish government were treating them as if they were accredited. Iran insists that the five are legitimate diplomats regardless of paperwork, and that by capturing them, the US is violating the Vienna Conventions and other international diplomatic regulations. But the US routinely ignores such laws in both Iraq and Afghanistan, causing criticism from human rights organizations and legal experts around the globe. Human Rights Watch researcher John Sifton says, “The US hasn’t articulated the legal grounds under which it detains ‘combatants’. They regularly conflate criminal terrorism, innocent civilians, and real combatants on the ground, and throw them all into the same pot. The vagueness of the war on terror has supplied the soil under which all this has flourished.” [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 1/25/2007; ASIA TIMES, 3/31/2007] Eventual Release of Some Captives - Months later, the US will release some of the captured Iranians (see November 6-9, 2007). Entity Tags: al-Quds Brigade, US Department of Defense, Peter Pace, US Department of State, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Mohsen Chirazi, Human Rights Watch, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Abu Amad Davari, Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Hezbollah, John Sifton, Iranian Liaison Office, Hoshyar Zebari, United Nations Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

February 2007: Head of Centcom Fallon Opposes Naval Buildup and Military Strikes against Iran

Admiral William Fallon. [Source: US Navy] Admiral William Fallon, named to replace General John Abizaid as head of the US Central Command (Centcom) for the Middle East and Southwest Asia (see March 16, 2007), reportedly privately opposes the proposed addition of a third US aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf, and vows that there will be no war against Iran as long as he is chief of Centcom. Fallon’s opposition to a military strike against Iran results in a shift in the Bush administration away from its aggressive, threatening posture towards Iran, and instead moves the administration’s rhetoric incrementally towards diplomatic engagement with that nation. Historian and author Gareth Porter writes, “That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon’s resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran.” Fallon’s resistance to further naval buildups in the Gulf apparently surprises Bush officials; in January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly suggested that Fallon’s appointment gives greater emphasis on the military option for Iran. Gates said in January, “As you look at the range of options available to the United States, the use of naval and air power, potentially, it made sense to me for all those reasons for Fallon to have the job.” A third carrier group deployment would have pushed the US naval presence in the region to the same level as it was during the last months of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Apparently, the deployment of a third carrier group was envisioned as a means of pressuring the Iranian government, in a plan to engage in a series of operations that would appear to Tehran to be war preparations much like those that presaged the invasion of Iraq (see March 19, 2003). But Fallon’s opposition scotched those plans. Fallon recently told an informed source that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch.… You know what choices I have. I’m a professional.” And Fallon indicated he is not alone: “There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box.” Fallon’s position weakens the belligerent posture adopted by Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides, and strengthens that of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is now preparing to make high-level diplomatic contacts with Iranian officials. [INTER PRESS SERVICE, 5/15/2007] Entity Tags: John P. Abizaid, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Gareth Porter, Robert M. Gates, US Central Command, William Fallon, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

February 20, 2007: McConnell Replaces Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence; Considered More ‘Amenable’ to White House Position on Iran

Mike McConnell. [Source: US Defense Department] Retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell is sworn in as the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), replacing John Negroponte. [WHITE HOUSE, 2/20/2007] Negroponte will become the Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice, a position that has been vacant since July 2006, when the previous deputy, Robert Zoellick, left to take a position with the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs. Negroponte is felt to be a voice of experience in the State Department, and one that will help the oft-faltering Rice in her duties. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/5/2007] Cheney, Negroponte, and the Iran NIE - One of the major factors in the White House’s decision to replace Negroponte is Vice President Dick Cheney’s insistence that the administration release a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that supports Cheney’s aggressive policy towards Iran, and does not include any dissenting views. Cheney, who has for months suppressed the draft NIE on Iran because he does not want any views other than his own to be included in the NIE (see November 10, 2007), was displeased with Negroponte; Negroponte angered Cheney and other neoconservatives when, in April 2006, he told reporters that the US intelligence community believes Iran is “a number of years off” from being “likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade.” Though Negroponte was merely echoing the position of the 2005 NIE on Iran, he came under fierce attack from Cheney allies inside and outside the administration. Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph publicly contradicted Negroponte, calling Iran’s nuclear program near the “point of no return,’ an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment. And neoconservative Frank Gaffney, a protege of former defense adviser Richard Perle, called Negroponte’s position on Iran’s nuclear program “absurd.” Cheney himself approached McConnell about accepting the position. McConnell is far more amenable to White House influence than Negroponte. On February 27, he will tell the Senate Armed Services Committee that he is “comfortable saying it’s probable” that the alleged export of explosively formed penetrators to Shi’ite insurgents in Iraq was linked to the highest leadership in Iran. Negroponte, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, have refused to go that far. And the 2005 NIE on Iran estimated that it would take Iran five to ten years to produce a nuclear weapon, another position that Cheney opposes. [INTER PRESS SERVICE, 11/10/2007] Entity Tags: Robert M. Gates, Robert G. Joseph, Robert B. Zoellick, Richard Perle, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Gaffney, Bush administration, Mike McConnell, John Negroponte Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

February 25, 2007: Rice Hints Bush Would Defy Congressional Legislation to Withdraw US Troops from Iraq Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggests that President Bush will defy any Congressional legislation to mandate troop withdrawals from Iraq, and urges the Democratically-controlled Congress not to interfere with the conduct of the war. Rice calls proposals drafted by Senate Democrats to limit the war “the worst of micromanagement of military affairs,” saying that instead more troops need to be sent as part of Bush’s “surge.” Rice adds, “I can’t imagine a circumstance in which it’s a good thing that their flexibility is constrained by people sitting here in Washington, sitting in the Congress.” Asked whether Bush will feel bound by legislation seeking to withdraw combat troops within 120 days, she replies, “The president is going to, as commander in chief, need to do what the country needs done.” Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says lawmakers will step up efforts to force Bush to change course. “The president needs a check and a balance,” he says. The Senate Democrats’ legislation would try to limit the mission of US troops in Iraq by revoking Congress’ 2002 vote authorizing Bush’s use of force against Saddam Hussein; one draft version supported by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) would pull out combat forces by March of next year and restrict US troops to fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, training the Iraqi security forces, and maintaining Iraq’s borders. “This is not a surge so much as it is a plunge into Baghdad and into the middle of a civil war,” says Levin. “We’re trying to change the policy, and if someone wants to call that tying the hands instead of changing the policy, yeah the president needs a check and a balance.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2/25/2007] Entity Tags: Harry Reid, Carl Levin, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

October 26, 2007: Putin Calls US Policy towards Iran that of ‘A Madman with a Razor Blade’ Russian President Vladimir Putin says, rhetorically, that the new US sanctions against Iran are the work of a “madman.” Responding to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s announcement of the harsh new sanctions, Putin asks, “Why worsen the situation and bring it to a dead end by threatening sanctions or military action? Running around like a madman with a razor blade, waving it around, is not the best way to resolve the situation.” Instead, Putin says, the standoff between Iran and the US needs to be resolved diplomatically. He points to the recent agreement over North Korea’s nuclear program as an example. “Not long ago it didn’t seem possible to resolve the situation with North Korea’s nuclear program, but we have practically solved it relying on peaceful means.” The US insists the sanctions are warranted by what they call Iran’s refusal to shelve its nuclear program, and its support of Islamist terrorism. Russia is providing critical assistance in the construction of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, and has actively opposed further UN sanctions against that nation. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10/25/2007; PRESS ASSOCIATION GROUP, 10/26/2007] Entity Tags: United Nations, Vladimir Putin, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

November 26, 2007: Rice Hosts Conference to Discuss Israeli-Palestinian Conference Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convenes a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland. It is one of the few Bush administration attempts to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and like the other attempts, the Annapolis conference will bear little fruit. Reflecting on the conference and on the Bush administration’s approach to the conflict in general, national security expert Anthony Cordesman will say: “In reality, a great deal of what Secretary Rice did seems to have been based as much on a search for visibility as any expectation of real progress. The fact was that you did not have to contend with [Palestinian] Chairman [Yasser] Arafat, but you did have to contend with a deeply divided Israel, which was far less willing to accept or make compromises over peace. And with the Palestinian movement, which was moving toward civil war. The United States can only make serious progress when both the Israelis and Palestinians are ready to move toward peace. Setting artificial deadlines and creating yet another set of unrealistic expectations [as is done at the Annapolis conference] did not lay the groundwork for sustained real progress. It instead created new sources of frustration and again made people throughout the Arab and Muslim world see the United States as hypocritical and ineffective.” [VANITY FAIR, 2/2009] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Anthony Cordesman, Bush administration Timeline Tags: US International Relations

December 4, 2007: Neoconservative Accuses Intelligence Community of Politicizing NIE Former UN ambassador John Bolton joins the neoconservative attack (see December 3-6, 2007) on the recently released National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (see December 3, 2007). Bolton says that the NIE is a victory for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, both advocates of diplomacy with Iran: “Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates have fundamentally won. This is an NIE very conveniently teed up for what the administration has been doing.” [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 12/4/2007] Bolton echoes and extends an accusation leveled by fellow neoconservative Norman Podhoretz about the intelligence community manipulating the NIE for its own ends (see December 3, 2007): “I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going. I think somebody needs to look at that.” [FOX NEWS, 12/4/2007] Entity Tags: John R. Bolton, Robert M. Gates, Norman Podhoretz, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

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December 5-6, 2007: White House Contradicts Bush’s Claim of Ignorance over Iran NIE The White House confirms that President Bush was told in August 2007 that Iran’s nuclear weapons program “may be suspended,” the conclusion of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) (see December 3, 2007). The White House’s admission is a direct contradiction of Bush’s assertion that he only learned of the NIE in late November (see December 3-4, 2007 and November 26-28, 2007). Press secretary Dana Perino says Bush was not told in August of the specifics behind the information about Iran’s nuclear program. Perino says that Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell told Bush in August that the new information might cause the intelligence community to revise its assessment of the Iranian program, but analysts still needed to complete their review before making a final judgment. However, Perino says there is no conflict between her statement and Bush’s insistence that he knew nothing about the substance of the intelligence assessment until late November, because Bush “wasn’t given the specific details” of the revised estimate. Perino’s account raises questions about why, if Bush knew the intelligence community believed Iran’s nuclear weapons program was in abeyance, two months later, he was still giving dire warnings about Iran being a threat to cause “World War III” if not halted (see October 20, 2007). Perino offers an explanation of those warnings, saying, “The president didn’t say we’re going to cause World War III. He was saying he wanted to avoid World War III.” Perino says it is unfair to question Bush’s veracity: “If anyone wants to call the president a liar, they are misreading the situation for their own political purposes. The liar is [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad [the president of Iran], and he has a lot of explaining to do.” Reaction - Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls Bush’s explanation unbelievable. “I refuse to believe that,” Biden says. “If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.” [CNN, 12/5/2007] Four former CIA officials call Bush’s claim of ignorance about the Iran intelligence “preposterous.” Melvin Goodman, a 24-year CIA veteran, calls Bush’s claim “unbelievable.” He is joined by Ray McGovern, another CIA veteran who routinely briefed George H. W. Bush during his two terms as vice president; Larry Johnson, the former deputy of the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism; and Bruce Riedel, a former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asian offices. McGovern is almost contemptuous of Bush’s claim: “The notion that the head of National Intelligence whispered in Bush’s ear, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you and it’s really important, but I’m not going to tell you about it until we check it out’—the whole thing is preposterous.” Riedel says that Bush “either chose to ignore what he heard or his director of national intelligence is not doing his job.” He doubts McConnell failed to do his part. “To me it is almost mind boggling that the president is told by the DNI that we have new important information on Iran and he doesn’t ask ‘what is that information?’” Riedel adds. It is not McConnell’s responsibility to tell Bush to “stop hyperventilating about the Iranian threat,” he says, but instead the job of National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Bush’s other policy advisers to keep “their eye on the intelligence and to take into account new information as it comes along.” Johnson says that the information used in the NIE would have been available months before it was released to the public, and would have automatically been included in the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Bush would have been told of the intelligence findings, as would Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Goodman and McGovern agree with Johnson’s statement. [HUFFINGTON POST, 12/5/2007] A deconstruction of Bush’s own statements over the last several months indicates that Bush changed his wording in early August, most likely because he was informed about the intelligence findings over Iran (see December 5, 2007). Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Dana Perino, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration, Bruce Riedel, Stephen J. Hadley, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mike McConnell, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Larry C. Johnson, Joseph Biden, Condoleezza Rice, Ray McGovern, Robert M. Gates, Melvin A. Goodman Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

January 23, 2008: Bush, Seven Top Officials Made 935 False Statements about Iraq in Run-up to War, Analysis Concludes

Center for Public Integrity logo. [Source: Center for Public Integrity] The Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a non-profit, non-partisan investigative journalism organization, releases an analysis of top Bush administration officials’ statements over the two years leading up to the March 18, 2003 invasion of Iraq. Significance - Analysts and authors Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith state that the analysis proves that the Bush administration engaged in deliberate deception to lead the country into war with Iraq, and disproves the administration’s contention that its officials were the victims of bad intelligence. CPI states that the analysis shows “the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.” According to CPI’s findings, eight top administration officials made 935 false statements concerning either Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction or Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda, between September 11, 2001 and the invasion itself. These statements were made on 532 separate occasions, by the following administration officials: President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and former White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. Foundation of Case for War - These deliberate falsehoods “were the underpinnings of the administration’s case for war,” says CPI executive director Bill Buzenberg. Lewis says, “Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq.” According to the analysis, Bush officials “methodically propagated erroneous information over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001.” The falsehoods dramatically escalated in August 2002, just before Congress passed a war resolution (see October 10, 2002). The falsehoods escalated again in the weeks before Bush’s State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) and Powell’s critical presentation to the United Nations (see February 5, 2003). All 935 falsehoods are available in a searchable database on the CPI Web site, and are sourced from what the organization calls “primary and secondary public sources, major news organizations and more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.” CPI finds that “officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements.” Breakdown - The tally of falsehoods is as follows: Bush: 260. 232 of those were about Iraqi WMD and 28 were about Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda. Powell: 254, with 244 of those about Iraq’s WMD programs. Rumsfeld and Fleischer: 109 each. Wolfowitz: 85. Rice: 56. Cheney: 48. McClellan: 14. The analysis only examines the statements of these eight officials, but, as CPI notes, “Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.” An 'Impenetrable Din' - Lewis and Reading-Smith write that the “cumulative effect of these false statements,” amplified and echoed by intensive media coverage that by and large did not question the administration’s assertions, “was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war.” CPI asserts that most mainstream media outlets were so enthusiastically complicit in the push for war that they “provided additional, ‘independent’ validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.” Lewis and Reading-Smith conclude: “Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?” [CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY, 1/23/2008; CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY, 1/23/2008] The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin approvingly calls the study “old-fashioned accountability journalism.” [WASHINGTON POST, 1/23/2008] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Charles Lewis, Center for Public Integrity, Bush administration, Bill Buzenberg, Ari Fleischer, Al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, Dan Froomkin, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, Paul Wolfowitz, George W. Bush, US Department of Defense, Mark Reading-Smith Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

February 4, 2008: Seattle Post-Intelligencer Calls for New 9/11 Inquiry The editorial board of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls for a new inquiry into 9/11, as it believes the 9/11 Commission’s investigation may have been compromised. The call is due to a new book by New York Times journalist Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission. The book highlights the close relationship between 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow and the White House, in particular National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, as well as an attempt he made to connect Iraq to al-Qaeda. The Post-Intelligencer writes of Zelikow that “[s]omeone with an apparent deference for the White House should not have been trusted with such a valued task.” It comments, “If bulletproof, the book prompts us to add one more thing to our to-do list for the next administration: Pressure it to charge a panel of independent experts to write a real, nonpartisan report on the attacks.” [SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 2/4/2008] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Philip Shenon, Philip Zelikow, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

March 20, 2008: Obama’s Private Passport Files Broken into on Three Separate Occasions, Says State Department

Barack Obama. [Source: Public domain via US Senate] The State Department confirms that three of its contract employees improperly accessed the private passport files of Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two of the three were fired and a third was subjected to as-yet-unstated disciplinary procedures. The Obama campaign quickly demands a “complete investigation” of who accessed the files, who they may have shared the information with, and what their possible motivations may have been. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack refuses to identify the three employees, and says that there is no reason as yet to believe that the three break-ins were motivated by anything but “imprudent curiosity.” The State Department’s inspector general is conducting an internal investigation. The Justice Department is monitoring the situation, and may launch its own investigation. [CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/21/2008; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/21/2008] Senior State Department officials claim not to have known about the violations of Obama’s passport files until very recently. [COMPUTERWORLD, 3/21/2008] Patrick Kennedy, the Undersecretary of State for Management and the department official responsible for the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the office which oversees such records, also refuses to divulge any information about the contractors who broke into Obama’s records. [SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, 3/21/2008] Bureau Should Have Informed Senior Officials - Kennedy says that his department erred in not informing senior State Department officials about the violations. “I will fully acknowledge this information should have been passed up the line,” he says. “It was dealt with at the office level.” Kennedy also says that the political affiliations of the three contract employees are not known, but “[n]ow that this has arisen, this becomes a germane question, and that will be something for the appropriate investigation to look into.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/21/2008] Kennedy says he will brief Obama’s campaign staff today on the situation. [WASHINGTON POST, 3/21/2008] Kennedy is new to the post; before him, the bureau chief was Maura Harty, who served as a US ambassador to Paraguay under the Clinton administration. [HUFFINGTON POST, 3/21/2008] Breaches Immediately Detected - The files were accessed on January 9, February 21, and March 14 (see March 21, 2008). All three improper accesses were immediately detected through a computerized monitoring system, and supervisors were notified shortly after each access. But no one in the Obama campaign was notified until today, a week after the third break-in. [CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/21/2008] Breaches May Constitute a Crime - The employees who broke into Obama’s files had access to his basic personal information, including his Social Security number, as well as his travel information, including information submitted by various US consulates from the nations to which Obama traveled (see March 21, 2008). Obama’s Social Security number can be used to pull a vast amount of information about Obama’s finances and other private, protected information. While the breaches themselves are not illegal (though they are violations of State Department protocols), if any information from the files were shared with anyone else, that would likely constitute a violation of US privacy laws. Compared with 1991 Breach - In 1991, President George H. W. Bush’s re-election campaign illegally broached Democratic contender Bill Clinton’s passport files for political reasons; that incident prompted an investigation led by independent counsel Joseph diGenova. DiGenova says of the Obama breach that because the two contract employees who were fired were not State Department employees, it will be more difficult for the acting inspector general of the department to force them to testify. “My guess is if he tries to talk to them now, in all likelihood they will take the Fifth,” he says, referring to the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. DiGenova says it is improbable that senior State Department officials, perhaps including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, could not have known about the breaches. “Is inconceivable to me that civil servants working in a department which was part of a scandal in 1992 on this very subject would not understand that it was a management necessity to inform superiors,” he says. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/21/2008] DiGenova’s investigations brought no charges against anyone in the Bush passport break-in. [WASHINGTON POST, 3/21/2008] Entity Tags: Joseph diGenova, Maura Harty, George Herbert Walker Bush, Sean McCormack, Condoleezza Rice, Patrick Kennedy, US Department of State, US Department of Justice, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Barack Obama Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

March 21, 2008: Waxman Asks Rice for Information about Obama Passport Break-in Henry Waxman (D-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, writes to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking for information about the recently announced, unauthorized access to Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) passport files (see March 20, 2008). Waxman also asks that the State Department make the information public. In a letter to Rice, Waxman asks for the names of the two State Department contractors who broke into Obama’s files. [SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, 3/21/2008; HENRY A. WAXMAN, 3/21/2008 ] State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says the State Department will make results of its internal investigation available to congressional oversight committees and to Obama’s office. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/21/2008] Entity Tags: Henry A. Waxman, Barack Obama, US Department of State, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

March 21, 2008: Clinton’s Passport File Breached; Rice Promises Investigation The State Department confirms that Senator Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) passport file was also inappropriately accessed, a day after the department revealed that Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) passport file was breached three times since January 2008 (see March 20, 2008). Obama and Clinton are battling for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she has apologized to Obama for the breach, “I told him that I was sorry, and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed.” Clinton says that she was told her passport file was breached sometime in 2007. Rice says she only learned of the Obama breach on March 20, 2008, the same day the news of the violations broke in the media. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/21/2008] State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says Clinton’s file was inadvertently accessed during a “training exercise.” [TPM MUCKRAKER, 3/21/2008] Rice promises a “full investigation” into the Obama passport breach, and presumably the Clinton breach as well, though she has not spoken directly of the Clinton passport breach. “[N]one of us wants to have a circumstance in which any American’s passport file is looked at in an unauthorized way. And in this case it should have been known to senior management. It was not, to my knowledge. And we also want to take every step that we can to make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” Rice says. [WASHINGTON POST, 3/21/2008] It is unknown what information, if any, was obtained from Clinton’s passport file, though the file contains a trove of private data (see March 21, 2008). Entity Tags: US Department of State, Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sean McCormack Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

April 9, 2008: ABC News Reports that Top Bush Officials Approved Harsh Interrogation Tactics since 2002 ABC News reports that, beginning in the spring of 2002, top Bush administration officials approved specific details about how terrorism suspects would be interrogated by the CIA (see Spring 2002 and Beyond). [ABC NEWS, 4/9/2008] The American Civil Liberties Union’s Caroline Fredrickson says: “With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House. This is what we suspected all along.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/10/2008] The top officials were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group that advises President Bush on national security issues, and included Vice President Dick Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-CIA Director George Tenet, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House itself. None of those involved will comment except for Powell, who says through an assistant that there were “hundreds of [Principals] meetings” on a wide variety of topics and that he is “not at liberty to discuss private meetings.” Until now, the Principals and other top Bush officials, including Bush himself, have denied any direct involvement in discussing or approving extreme interrogation methods. Top Bush officials have also insisted that everything done in interrogating terrorism suspects is legal, including Powell, who tells a reporter, “I’m not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal.” Last year Tenet told a reporter: “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the attorney general of the United States.” [ABC NEWS, 4/9/2008; ABC NEWS, 4/11/2008] A former senior intelligence official says, “If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you’d see a correlation.” Those who attended the dozens of meetings decided “there’d need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics” before using them on detainees. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/10/2008] Entity Tags: Colin Powell, American Civil Liberties Union, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, National Security Council, John Ashcroft, Condoleezza Rice, Central Intelligence Agency, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Bush administration, George J. Tenet Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties

April 11, 2008: President Bush Admits to Knowing of High-Level Approvals of Torture President Bush admits he knew about his National Security Council Principals Committee’s discussion and approval of harsh interrogation methods against certain terror suspects (see Spring 2002 and Beyond). Earlier reports had noted that the Principals—a group of top White House officials led by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—had deliberately kept Bush “out of the loop” in order for him to maintain “deniability.” Bush tells a reporter: “Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people. And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Bush says that the news of those meetings to consider extreme interrogation methods was not “startling.” He admitted as far back as 2006 that such techniques were being used by the CIA (see September 6, 2006). But only now does the news of such direct involvement by Bush’s top officials become public knowledge. The Principals approved the waterboarding of several terror suspects, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see Shortly After March 1, 2003 and March 10, 2007); Bush defends the use of such extreme measures against Mohammed, saying: “We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it. And no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed knew.… I think it’s very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack—I mean, the 9/11 attacks.” [ABC NEWS, 4/11/2008] Bush’s admission is no surprise. The day before Bush makes his remarks, law professor Jonathan Turley said: “We really don’t have much of a question about the president’s role here. He’s never denied that he was fully informed of these measures. He, in fact, early on in his presidency—he seemed to brag that they were using harsh and tough methods. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was aware of this. The doubt is simply whether anybody cares enough to do anything about it.” [MSNBC, 4/10/2008] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, Condoleezza Rice, Jonathan Turley, National Security Council, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, Civil Liberties

May 20, 2008: Justice Department: CIA, Military Interrogation Techniques Amount to ‘Borderline Torture’ The Department of Justice (DOJ) releases a long-anticipated report on the alleged torture and abuse of terrorist suspects in US custody. The report was spurred by a Congressional request after Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests showed that FBI agents at Guantanamo had raised concerns about CIA- and military-conducted interrogations. The report identifies then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as a recipient of complaints of torture. [AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 5/20/2008] The report, issued by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine, shows that CIA officials regularly ignored DOJ warnings that the interrogation tactics they were using amounted to “borderline torture.” The report also concludes that the Defense Department is ultimately responsible for how prisoners in military custody are being treated. As a result, the report finds no reason to bring criminal complaints against CIA officials or interrogators. 'Seven Months of Foot-Dragging' - The report documents what CBS News calls “seven months of foot-dragging” by the Pentagon, which attempted to water down the report. Failing that, the report cites numerous instances where Pentagon officials attempted to redact information in the report from public view. The report is lightly redacted. FBI Praised for Legal, Non-Coercive Interrogation Techniques - The report generally praises the FBI’s own interrogation efforts, methods, and results. It confirms that when CIA officials became impatient with what they were calling “throwaway results” by FBI interrogators, particularly in the case of Abu Zubaida (see April - June 2002), the CIA took over interrogations of prisoners such as Zubaida and began using harsh, torturous techniques. The FBI pulled its agents from the ongoing interrogations, refusing to participate in what it considered to be illegal actions (see May 13, 2004). (In 2009, a former FBI interrogator will confirm that the FBI gathered far more useful information from its non-coercive techniques than the CIA did with its “borderline torture” methods—see Late March through Early June, 2002 and April 22, 2009.) [CBS NEWS, 5/20/2008; NEWSWEEK, 5/20/2008; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 5/20/2008] Witnesses to Torture - However, the report makes clear that FBI agents witnessed harsh interrogations that may have constituted torture at three locations—Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Force Base facility, and Guantanamo Bay. FBI agents are explicitly banned from using brutality, physical violence, intimidation, or other means of causing duress when interviewing suspects. Instead, the FBI generally tries to build a rapport with suspects to get information. “Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war,” one FBI employee, senior FBI lawyer Spike Bowman, reported. Bowman worried that the FBI would be “tarred by the same brush,” when asked whether the FBI should refer the matter to the Defense Department Inspector General, and added, “Were I still on active duty, there is no question in my mind that it would be a duty to do so.” The report cites two FBI agents at Guantanamo who “had concerns not only about the proposed techniques but also about the glee with which the would-be [military] participants discussed their respective roles in carrying out these techniques, and the utter lack of sophistication and circus-like atmosphere within this interrogation strategy session.” [CBS NEWS, 5/20/2008; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 5/20/2008] Blocking Access to Zubaida - CIA general counsel John Rizzo refused to let DOJ investigators interview Zubaida for the report. The CIA has admitted that Zubaida was waterboarded (see Mid-May, 2002, March 2002 and April - June 2002). The report says that the CIA’s denial of access to Zubaida was “unwarranted,” and “hampered” the investigation, and contrasts the CIA’s actions with those of the Defense Department, which allowed DOJ investigators to interview Guantanamo prisoners. Rizzo told the DOJ that Zubaida “could make false allegations against CIA employees.” [NEWSWEEK, 5/20/2008; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 5/20/2008] Split over Al-Khatani - The rift between the CIA and FBI came to a head over the treatment of Mohamed al-Khatani, one of several suspected terrorists accused of being the fabled “20th hijacker” for the 9/11 attacks (see December 2001). According to the report, al-Khatani was abused in a number of ways by military interrogators at Guantanamo; the report cites the use of attack dogs, shackling and stress positions, sexual humiliation, mocking al-Khatani’s religion, and extended sleep deprivation among other tactics. FBI officials complained to the White House after learning that military interrogators forced him to “perform dog tricks,” “be nude in front of a female,” and wear “women’s underwear on his head.” Al-Khatani did eventually “confess” (see July 2002), but FBI officials expressed serious doubts as to the validity of his confession, both in its accuracy and in its admissability in a criminal court. The then-chief of the Guantanamo facility, Major General Geoffrey Miller, ordered a “relentless” and “sustained attack” on al-Khatani. “The plan was to keep him up until he broke,” an FBI agent told superiors, and some of those superiors worried that those techniques would render his confession inadmissible. Al-Khatani was hospitalized for hypothermia during those interrogations. His lawyer, Gitanjali Gutierrez, says her client recently attempted suicide because of his treatment. “The tactics that were used against and the impact, the pain and suffering it caused him and the damage that it caused him does rise to a level of torture,” she says. The government recently dropped all charges against al-Khatani (see October 26, 2006 and January 14, 2009), because if he had been brought to trial, all of the evidence of his treatment would be made public. [CBS NEWS, 5/20/2008; NEWSWEEK, 5/20/2008; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, 5/20/2008] Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Glenn Fine, John Rizzo, Marion (“Spike”) Bowman, Gitanjali Gutierrez, Geoffrey D. Miller, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Condoleezza Rice, Abu Zubaida, Mohamed al-Khatani, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Defense Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

June 3, 2008: Oversight Chairman Requests Interview Transcripts from CIA Leak Investigation Henry Waxman (D-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, writes to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting access to the transcripts of interviews by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see Shortly after February 13, 2002). The interviews were conducted as part of the investigation of former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Waxman notes that he made a similar request in December 2007 which has gone unfulfilled. Waxman wants the reports from Bush and Cheney’s interviews, and the unredacted reports from the interviews with Libby, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, former White House aide Cathie Martin, “and other senior White House officials.” Information revealed by McClellan in conjuction with his new book What Happened, including McClellan’s statement that Bush and Cheney “directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby,” and his assertion that “Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney… allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie,” adds to evidence from Libby’s interviews that Cheney may have been the source of the information that Wilson worked for the CIA. For Cheney to leak Wilson’s identity, and to then direct McClellan to mislead the public, “would be a major breach of trust,” Waxman writes. He adds that no argument can be made for withholding the documents on the basis of executive privilege, and notes that in 1997 and 1998, the Oversight Committee demanded and received FBI interviews with then-President Clinton and then-Vice President Gore without even consulting the White House. [US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 6/3/2008; TPM MUCKRAKER, 6/3/2008] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Cathie Martin, Al Gore, George W. Bush, Henry A. Waxman, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Scott McClellan, Michael Mukasey Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 6, 2008: Media Figures Discuss Iraq Occupation, Media’s Enabling of Administration’s Push to War

Bill Moyers, John Walcott, Jonathan Landay, and Greg Mitchell on PBS’s ‘Journal.’ [Source: PBS] In his regular “Journal” broadcast, PBS political commentator Bill Moyers focuses on the role of the media in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. “America was deceived, with the media’s help,” Moyers declares, and interviews three media figures to help explain how: John Walcott, Washington bureau chief of McClatchy News; Jonathan Landay, one of Walcott’s “ace reporters;” and Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher, “known to many of us as the watchdog’s watchdog.” Part of the discussion focuses on the failure of most media reporters and broadcasters to question the Bush administration’s assertions about the Iraq war. Landay says, “I was just I was left breathless by some of the things that I heard where you heard correspondents say, ‘Well, we did ask the tough questions. We asked them to the White House spokesmen,’ Scott McClellan and others. And you say to yourself, ‘And you expected to get real answers? You expected them to say from the White House podium—“Yeah, well, there were disagreements over the intelligence, but we ignored them”’ when the President made his speeches and the Vice President made his speeches. No, I don’t think so.” Mitchell agrees, noting that ABC reporter Charles Gibson said that we “wouldn’t ask any different questions.” Mitchell says he found Gibson’s remarks “shocking.” Mitchell continues: “[T]hat someone would say we would even with the chance to relive this experience and so much we got wrong—going to war is—which is still going on over five years later, all the lost lives, all the financial costs of that. And then to look back at this, you know, this terrible episode in history of American journalism and say that if I could do it all over again, I’m not sure we would ask any different questions.” Walcott takes a different tack, saying that reporters “may have asked all the right questions. The trouble is they asked all the wrong people.” Landay notes that “you have to take the time to find those people,” and Mitchell adds that when you do find real information, “[y]ou can’t bury it.” Landay adds that some powerful, public admission of error and self-examination might go far to counter the perception that the media is just as untrustworthy as the government. Drowned Out - Walcott notes that even when reporters found informed sources willing to talk about the realities behind the push for war, they were drowned out by “Donald Rumsfeld at the podium or Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice saying, ‘We can’t allow the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud’” (see September 4, 2002 and September 8, 2002). “Over and over again,” Moyers notes. “Over and over again on camera,” Walcott continues. “[T]hat trumps the kind of reporting that John and [Landay’s partner] Warren Strobel did from these mid-level guys who actually know that there’s no prospect of any smoking gun let alone a mushroom cloud. And so when it gets to packaging television news, it’s picture driven, it’s celebrity driven, and that doesn’t allow much room for this kind of hard-nosed reporting under the radar.” Mitchell says, “There’s been at least six opportunities in the last two months for the media to do this long delayed and much needed self-assessment, self-criticism to the American public and it hasn’t happened.” Liberal vs. Conservative Media - Moyers notes that many conservative media outlets “do not believe they got it wrong. I mean, Fox News was reinforcing the administration’s messages back then and still does today.” Walcott notes, “You know, if Fox News’s mission is to defend Republican administrations then they’re right, they didn’t fail.” He notes that in his book, McClellan draws a distinction between the conservative and the “liberal” media (presumably the New York Times, Washington Post, etc). “I don’t understand what liberal versus conservative has to do with this,” Walcott says. “I would have thought that conservatives would be the ones to ask questions about a march to war. How much is this gonna cost us? What’s the effect of this gonna be on our military, on our country’s strength overseas? I don’t think it’s a liberal conservative question at all. I think that’s, frankly, a canard by Scott.” Celebrity 'Experts' - Moyers asks about the “experts” who predicted that the war would be quick, bloodless, and successful. Even though they were “terribly wrong,” Moyers notes that most of them are “still on the air today pontificating. I mean, there seems to be no price to be paid for having been wrong about so serious an issue of life and death, war and peace.” Walcott says they are not news analysts so much as they are celebrities. Big name actors can make bad movies and still draw million-dollar salaries for their next film: “It’s the same phenomenon. A name is what matters. And it’s about celebrity. It’s about conflict. It’s about—” Landay completes Walcott’s sentence: “Ratings.” 'Skunks at the Garden Party' - Perhaps the most disturbing portion of the discussion is when Walcott notes that the kind of old-fashioned investigative reporting exemplified by Landay and Strobel is “by definition… unpopular.… Because the public doesn’t wanna hear it.… Doesn’t wanna hear the President lied to them. Doesn’t wanna hear that the local police chief is on the take. You know, people don’t like necessarily to hear all that kind of stuff. And when you’re worried about, above all, your advertising revenue, you become more vulnerable to those kinds of pressures.… Well, the skunks don’t get invited to the garden party. And part of our job is to be the skunks at the garden party.” [PBS, 6/6/2008] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Charles Gibson, Bush administration, Bill Moyers, ABC News, Fox News, Washington Post, Public Broadcasting System, Editor & Publisher, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, McClatchy News, Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay, Greg Mitchell, Scott McClellan, John Walcott, New York Times Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda

June 9, 2008: German Lawyers Seek Extradition of CIA Agents over Rendition Case A group of German civil rights lawyers files a lawsuit against the German government, demanding that the government attempt to extradite 13 CIA agents named in the alleged kidnapping of a German citizen. Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border (see December 31, 2003-January 23, 2004 and January 23 - March 2004). He was flown by the CIA to a detention center in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was interrogated and abused for months. El-Masri says he was released in Albania in May 2004, and told that he was the victim of mistaken identity (see May 29, 2004). No government or body has yet taken responsibility for el-Masri’s kidnapping and brutalization. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other US officials have refused to address the case, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the US acknowledged making a mistake with el-Masri. Accountability - “We are demanding accountability” with the lawsuit, says attorney Wolfgang Kaleck. For himself, el-Masri says, “I just want the German government to acknowledge what happened to me.” An American judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by el-Masri against the CIA and three US corporations in 2006 (see May 18, 2006). In January 2007, German prosecutors issued warrants for the arrests of 13 CIA agents, accusing them of wrongfully imprisoning el-Masri and causing him serious bodily harm. The US Justice Department refused the requests, citing “American national interests,” and the German Ministry of Justice dropped the request. The lawsuit seeks to force the German government to reconsider extradition for the CIA agents. Extraordinary Rendition - According to human rights organizations, el-Masri’s case is an example of “extraordinary rendition,” where the US takes suspected terrorists to foreign countries where they are subjected to abuse and torture. A criminal lawsuit against CIA officers in conjunction with the el-Masri case is also ongoing in Macedonia; that case could end up before the European Court of Human Rights. And the American Civil Liberties Union has also filed a petition on el-Masri’s behalf through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a body that seeks to establish international laws. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/9/2008] Entity Tags: European Court of Human Rights, Condoleezza Rice, American Civil Liberties Union, German Ministry of Justice, Khalid el-Masri, US Department of Justice, Wolfgang Kaleck, Central Intelligence Agency, Angela Merkel Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

June 9, 2008: Senate Report Ignores White House Propaganda Group The recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report on misleading, exaggerated, and inaccurate presentations of the prewar Iraqi threat by the Bush administration (see June 5, 2008) leaves out some significant material. The report says that the panel did not review “less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch.” The committee made no attempt to obtain White House records or interview administration officials because, the report says, such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report. Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus notes that “[o]ne obvious target for such an expanded inquiry would have been the records of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a group set up in August 2002 by then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.” WHIG (see August 2002) was composed of, among other senior White House officials, senior political adviser Karl Rove; the vice president’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, and James Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas Calio; and a number of policy aides led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. WHIG Led Marketing of War - Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, recently wrote in his book What Happened that WHIG “had been set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the war to the public.… The script had been finalized with great care over the summer [for a] “campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary.” On September 6, 2002, Card hinted as much to reporters when he said, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” (see September 6, 2002). Two days later, the group scored its first hit with a front-page New York Times story about Iraq’s secret purchase of aluminum tubes that, the story said, could be used to produce nuclear weapons (see September 8, 2002). The information for that story came from “senior administration officials” now known to be members of WHIG. The story was the first to make the statement that “the first sign of a ‘smoking gun’ [proving the existence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program] may be a mushroom cloud” (see September 4, 2002); that same morning, the same message was repeated three times by various senior administration officials on the Sunday talk shows (see September 8, 2002, September 8, 2002, and September 8, 2002). WHIG did not “deliberately mislead the public,” McClellan claimed in his book, but wrote that the “more fundamental problem was the way [Bush’s] advisers decided to pursue a political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people.… As the campaign accelerated,” caveats and qualifications were downplayed or dropped altogether. Contradictory intelligence was largely ignored or simply disregarded.” Records Perusal Would 'Shed Light' - If indeed the White House “repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent,” as committee chairman John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) has said, then an examination of WHIG’s records would, Pincus writes, “shed much light” on the question. [WASHINGTON POST, 6/9/2008] Entity Tags: New York Times, Karen Hughes, John D. Rockefeller, James R. Wilkinson, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Mary Matalin, Senate Intelligence Committee, Stephen J. Hadley, Walter Pincus, White House Iraq Group, Nicholas E. Calio, Scott McClellan, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

September 24, 2008: Italian Spy Chief Requests Testimony by Former National Security Advisor Rice in Kidnap Case Nicolo Pollari, former head of the Italian military intelligence service SISMI, asks for former US national security adviser and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify in his defense in a kidnap case. The case concerns the 2003 rendition from Italy to Egypt of Islamist extremist Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (see Noon February 17, 2003). SISMI and the CIA worked together on the abduction and several operatives of both organizations are now on trial for it. Rice approved the operation shortly before it was carried out (see Between February 10, 2003 and February 16, 2003). The value of Rice’s testimony is unclear. According to reporter Jeff Stein, one observer of the case says that at best Rice could only say that the US wanted to kidnap Nasr. However, as the US is not co-operating with the Italian investigation, Rice does not go to Italy to testify. [CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY, 9/24/2008] Entity Tags: Nicolo Pollari, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives

October 27, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Limbaugh Falsely Claims Obama ‘Anti-Constitution’ As reported by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh distorts and misstates comments by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from 2001, asking listeners how Obama can be sworn in as president if he “flatly rejected” the Constitution. Limbaugh tells his listeners that Obama “calls himself a constitutional professor or a constitutional scholar. In truth, Barack Obama was an anti-constitutional professor. He studied the Constitution, and he flatly rejected it. He doesn’t like the Constitution, he thinks it is flawed, and now I understand why he was so reluctant to wear the American flag lapel pin. Why would he?… I don’t see how he can take the oath of office” because “[h]e has rejected the Constitution.” Obama said during a September 6, 2001 panel discussion on Chicago’s WBEZ radio that the Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” Obama’s criticism was directed at the Founding Fathers’ handling of the issue of slavery in the Constitution. Later in the discussion, Obama said that the Constitution is “a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now.” Limbaugh plays carefully edited clips from the WBEZ program but does not play the larger portion of Obama’s remarks that give a fuller picture of his meaning. Instead, he falsely accuses Obama of saying that the Constitution cannot “be fixed,” and asks: “How is he going to… how is he gonna place his hand on the Bible and swear that he, Barack Hussein Obama, will uphold the Constitution that he feels reflects the nation’s fundamental flaw. Fundamental. When he talks about a fundamental flaw, he’s not talking about a flaw that can be fixed. Fundamental means that this document is, from the get-go, wrong.” Media Matters notes that “several influential Republicans,” including President Bush, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Chief Justice John Roberts, “have articulated a similar view” to Obama’s. [MEDIA MATTERS, 10/28/2008] Entity Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, John B. Roberts II, Media Matters Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, 2008 Presidential Election

December 14, 2008: Iraqi Journalist Insults Bush by Hurling Shoes at Him

An Iraqi journalist hurls a shoe at President Bush. [Source: BBC] An Iraqi journalist throws a pair of shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad. In Arab culture, throwing shoes at a person, or showing them the sole of your shoe, is considered a grave insult—shoes are considered ritually unclean. During the conference, Muntadar al-Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, stands up, shouts, “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!” and hurls the first shoe. He then shouts, “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq!” and hurls the second shoe. Bush ducks away from the thrown shoes, and both miss their target. Al-Zaidi is wrestled to the floor by security guards within seconds of throwing the second shoe, removed from the room and beaten, and taken into custody where he is soon arrested. Bush brushes aside the incident, telling the remaining journalists, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” as al-Zaidi’s screaming can be heard from outside the conference room. Bush flew to Baghdad for a surprise visit. During the momentary chaos after the shoes are hurled, his press secretary, Dana Perino, is struck in the eye with a microphone stand; the blow is accidental. Bush, in the last weeks of his presidency, says that the war in Iraq is not yet over, and more work remains to be done. He will later joke, “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw.” Other Iraqi journalists say the attack was symbolic, and note that Iraqis threw shoes and used them to beat statues of Saddam Hussein after his overthrow. Bush says being pelted with shoes may be one of the “weirdest” moments of his presidency. He is accompanied to the press conference by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/14/2008; BBC, 12/15/2008; BBC, 12/15/2008; USA TODAY, 12/15/2008] Bush later compares the incident to the disruption of an earlier White House press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao by a Falun Gong follower, and says it would be wrong to read the feelings of an entire country into the single instance. “I don’t think you can take one guy and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq,” he says. He notes that the other Iraqi journalists in the room “were very apologetic and said this doesn’t represent the Iraqi people.” [USA TODAY, 12/15/2008] Others' Reactions - A former colleague of Al-Zaidi, Haider Nassar, explains, “He had bad feelings about the coalition forces.” Of al-Zaidi’s actions, Nassar says it is a poor way to establish his points. “This is so silly; it’s just the behavior of an individual,” Nassar says. “He destroyed his future.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/14/2008] Adil Shamoo, an Iraqi analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, says of the incident: “I think we should go beyond the shoe and think about the fact that the US should respect Iraq’s sovereignty in order to regain respect of the Iraqi people and the Arab world. I think Bush has increased terrorism against the United States and instablity in the Middle East because of his policies.” [AL JAZEERA, 12/15/2008] History of Shoes Used to Insult Americans - This is not the first time Iraqis have used shoes to insult American officials. Until the 2003 invasion, a likeness of Bush’s father, former President George H. W. Bush, was prominently featured in a floor mosaic near the front door of Baghdad’s Rashid Hotel; visitors would tread on it in symbolic punishment for alleged “war crimes” committed during the 1991 Gulf War. (The likeness has since been removed.) In 2004, the corpses of four American mercenaries killed and strung up on a bridge in Fallujah (see March 31, 2004) were beaten with shoes by local citizens. Posters of the current president, adorned with shoes, are common sights in many parts of Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been given the insulting nickname of “Kundera,” meaning shoe, by many Middle Easterners. [BBC, 12/15/2008; USA TODAY, 12/15/2008] In late January, an Iraqi orphanage will unveil a “shoe monument” in honor of al-Zaidi’s act (see January 29, 2009). Al-Zaidi will be freed from prison in September 2009 (see September 14, 2009). Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Dana Perino, Haider Nassar, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Nouri al-Maliki, Muntadar al-Zaidi, Adil Shamoo Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

February 2009: National Security Council Legal Adviser: Decision to Create Military Commissions a ‘Process Failure’ with Serious Long-Term Ramifications Reflecting on the Bush administration’s decision to create “military commissions” to try terror suspects (see November 13, 2001), John Bellinger, the former legal adviser to the National Security Council during much of the Bush administration, says: “A small group of administration lawyers drafted the president’s military order establishing the military commissions, but without the knowledge of the rest of the government, including the national security adviser, me, the secretary of state, or even the CIA director. And even though many of the substantive problems with the military commissions as created by the original order have been resolved by Congress in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hamdan case (see June 30, 2006), we have been suffering from this original process failure ever since.” [VANITY FAIR, 2/2009] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Colin Powell, US Supreme Court, George J. Tenet, National Security Council, John Bellinger Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

February 2009: Expert: Iraq Surge Successful in Spite of White House

Anthony Cordesman. [Source: Voice of America] The Bush administration touted its “surge” of additional forces in Iraq (see January 10, 2007) as “a game-changer,” bringing what it described as “peace and stability” to the beleagured nation. In retrospect, national security expert Anthony Cordesman agrees to a point. “We can all argue over the semantics of the word ‘surge,’ and it is fair to say that some goals were not met,” he tells a reporter. “We didn’t come close to providing additional civilian-aid workers that were called for in the original plan. And often it took much longer to achieve the effects than people had planned. But the fact was that this was a broad political, military, and economic strategy, which was executed on many different levels. And credit has to go to General [David] Petraeus, General [Raymond] Odierno, and Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker for taking what often were ideas, very loosely defined, and policies which were very broadly stated, and transforming them into a remarkably effective real-world effort. It’s important to note that we made even more mistakes in Afghanistan than we did in Iraq. We were far slower to react, but in both cases we were unprepared for stability operations; we had totally unrealistic goals for nation building; at a political level we were in a state of denial about the seriousness of popular anger and resistance, about the rise of the insurgency, about the need for host-country support and forces; and we had a singularly unfortunate combination of a Secretary of Defense [Donald Rumsfeld] and a Vice President [Dick Cheney] who tried to win through ideology rather than realism and a Secretary of State [Condoleezza Rice] who essentially stood aside from many of the issues involved. And in fairness, rather than blame subordinates, you had a president who basically took until late 2006 to understand how much trouble he was in in Iraq and seems to have taken till late 2008 to understand how much trouble he was in in Afghanistan.” [VANITY FAIR, 2/2009] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Anthony Cordesman, Bush administration, Raymond Odierno, Condoleezza Rice, Ryan C. Crocker, David Petraeus, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

March 18, 2009: Rice: No One in Bush Administration Ever Conflated Hussein, Iraq with 9/11

Condoleezza Rice on the Charlie Rose show. [Source: PBS] Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells PBS’s Charlie Rose that “no one” in the White House ever asserted that Saddam Hussein had any connections to 9/11. Rose says, “But you didn’t believe [the Hussein regime] had anything to do with 9/11.” Rice replies: “No. No one was arguing that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11.… I was certainly not. The president was certainly not.… That’s right. We were not arguing that.” Rice refuses to answer Rose’s question asking if former Vice President Dick Cheney ever tried to make the connection. In reality, former President Bush and his top officials, including Cheney and Rice, worked diligently to reinforce a connection between Iraq and 9/11 in the public mind before the March 2003 invasion (see (Between 10:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, After September 11, 2001, Mid-September, 2001, September 17, 2001, September 19, 2001, September 20, 2001, September 28, 2001, November 6-8, 2001, December 9, 2001, 2002-March 2003, March 19, 2002, June 21, 2002, July 25, 2002, August 2002, August 20, 2002, September 12, 2002, September 16, 2002, September 21, 2002, September 25, 2002, September 26, 2002, September 27, 2002, September 28, 2002, October 7, 2002, October 7, 2002, October 15, 2002, December 2, 2002, December 12, 2002, January 26, 2003, January 28, 2003, Early February 2003, February 5, 2003, (2:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.) February 5, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 6, 2003, February 11 or 12, 2003, and February 17, 2003). [THINK PROGRESS, 3/19/2009] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Bush administration, Charlie Rose, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

October 1, 2009: Judge Rules Cheney Leak Interview Must Be Made Public Federal judge Emmet Sullivan rules that the FBI must publicly reveal information from its 2004 interview with then-Vice President Dick Cheney during the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation (see May 8, 2004). The information has been kept classified by both the Bush and Obama administrations, who have argued that future presidents, vice presidents, and their senior staff may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could became public. Sullivan rules that there is no justification to withhold the FBI records of Cheney’s interview, since the leak investigation has long since concluded. Further, the idea that such a judgment may lead to future reluctance to cooperate with investigations is ‘incurably speculative’ and cannot affect his judgment. To rule in favor of the Bush and Obama administrations, Sullivan says, would be “breathtakingly broad” and “be in direct contravention of ‘the basic policy’ of” the Freedom of Information Act. He does allow some portions, affecting national security and private communications between Cheney and former President Bush, to be redacted. Those portions include details about Cheney’s talks with then-CIA Director George Tenet about Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), talks with then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, discussions about Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), discussions about how to respond to press inquiries about the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity, and Cheney’s involvement in declassification discussions. The Justice Department has previously indicated that it would appeal any ruling allowing the information of Cheney’s testimony to be made public. The declassification was sparked by a July 2008 lawsuit filed by the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Justice Department seeking records related to Cheney’s interview in the investigation. In August, CREW sued for the records. CREW’s Melanie Sloan says the group hopes the Obama administration will reveal the entire record in the interest of transparency. “The American people deserve to know the truth about the role the vice president played in exposing Mrs. Wilson’s covert identity,” she says. “High-level government officials should not be permitted to hide their misconduct from public view.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10/1/2009; POLITICO, 10/1/2009] Entity Tags: Melanie Sloan, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Obama administration, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson, US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing