"As Agency officers current and former (officials) have made clear, those charges are false," the CIA statement said, noting that the White House and relevant British intelligence officials have also repudiated Suskind's charges.

"Those denials are powerful in and of themselves," the CIA said. "But they are also backed by a thorough, time-consuming records search within CIA and by interviews with other officers--senior and junior alike--who were directly involved in Iraq operations."

"At this point, the origins of the forgery, like the whereabouts of Habbush himself, remain unclear," the CIA said. "But this much is certain: Suskind is off the mark."

"To characterize it right, I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on--it was to--and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: 'Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.' To be honest with you, I don't want to make it sound--I for sure don't want to portray this as George jumping: 'Okay, this has gotta happen.' As I remember it--and, again, it's still vague, so I'll be very straight with you on this--is it wasn't that important. It was: 'This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. 'Rob,' you know, 'do something with this.' I think it was more like that than: 'Get this done.'"

Rob Richer, the former CIA official at the center of  sensational charges that the White House ordered the spy agency to fabricate a document tying Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, repeated today that author Ron Suskind gravely misrepresented their interview on the subject.

The legitimacy of a web site that popped up Saturday, Aug. 8,  with Richer's formal statement denying Suskind's charges, has come under attack in recent days as possibly a fabrication itself.

But in a brief telephone interview today, Richer reaffirmed that the statement on the controversial Web site, headlined "Richer Response," was indeed his.

"It's mine," he said. 

But the Web site, he said, wasn't.

"I did not create the Web site," he said, joking "I wouldn't know how."

Richer said he didn't know who created the Web site, guessing that it was someone who wanted to give wider circulation to his categorical denials earlier in the week that statements and views attributed to him by Suskind in his book, The Way of the World, were false.

Close observers of the controversy have grown increasingly skeptical of the accuracy of  Suskind's interviews with CIA officials, who are portrayed as telling the author that the White House ordered the CIA to fabricate a "captured document" that would show former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein conspiring with al Qaeda and importing uranium from Africa.

Adding to the mystery, the document did surface in a number of stories in conservative media outlets in  Dec. 2003, but U.S. intelligence officials dismissed it as a forgery.        

"Far from being comfortable" with his quotations, as Suskind maintains, Richer says he "told Mr. Suskind that many of the things he wrote about what I did and said were wrong."

"Mr. Suskind has now released an edited transcript of an apparent conversation between us that he alleges supports one of the central themes in his book.  It does not," Richer writes. 

"I stand by my earlier statement and my absolute belief that the charges outlined in Mr. Suskind's book regarding Agency involvement in forging documents are not true."

"I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from [Saddam Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalil] Habbush [al-Tikiriti] as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book."  For the record, no one outside my chain of command directed me to do so either."

Former top CIA official Rob Richer said that orders to fabricate a letter showing that Saddam Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks probably came from the office of Vice president Dick Cheney, according to an interview transcript author Ron Suskind released today.

"(A)lmost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president," says Richer, the agency's former deputy chief of clandestine operations, in the transcript.

"But he didn't say that specifically," says Richer.

Then again, the CIA man adds:

 "I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president."

Richer had denied earlier in the week that he ever "received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book."

Suskind told SpyTalk Thursday night (see below) he was releasing portions of the transcript to defend himself against accusations by Richer and another CIA official, John Maguire, that he had misinterpreted their remarks in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.

But, as with Richer's remarks about Cheney and Libby, the transcript falls far short of clearing up who said what to whom on the main issue: White House involvement in a clandestine plot to manipulate public opinion on the invasion of Iraq.

To add even more mystery to the affair, Richer suggests the target "wasn't so much to influence America--that's illegal--but it was kinda like a covert, a way to influence Iraqis."

Still left unclear is exactly what the CIA was supposed to do with the letter, allegedly provided by the White House, purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had conspired with al Qaeda on 9/11 and obtained uranium from Niger.

Here's Richer, on Suskind's transcript:

"To characterize it right, I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on--it was to--and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: 'Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.' To be honest with you, I don't want to make it sound--I for sure don't want to portray this as George jumping: 'Okay, this has gotta happen.' As I remember it--and, again, it's still vague, so I'll be very straight with you on this--is it wasn't that important. It was: 'This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. 'Rob,' you know, 'do something with this.' I think it was more like that than: 'Get this done.'   

Not confused enough? There's more ambiguity on Suskind's web page. 

Author Ron Suskind says he will release transcripts of his interviews with a top CIA official that will confirm his story that in 2003 the White House ordered the agency to fabricate a phony document linking Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

The letter, written by an Iraqi intelligence official under the control of the CIA, according to Suskind, was concocted to mislead the public into believing that Saddam Hussein conspired with Osama Bin Laden in the attacks, and had gotten uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons, thus justifying the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Then-CIA Director George Tenet directed agency officials to carry out the subterfuge under orders from the White House, Suskind writes in a new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.

One of the CIA officials involved, Robert Richer, the agency's then-deputy director of clandestine operations, issued a statement this week denying Suskind's allegations.

"I never received direction from George Tenet (CIA director at the time) or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book,"  Richer said in a statement that was initially released by the White House .

But in a telephone interview this evening, Suskind said he is planning to release transcripts of his on-the-record interviews with Richer to back up his story.

"There are lots of transcripts, lots of tapes," Suskind told me. "In the next couple days the transcripts will be coming out."

Suskind said he will probably post them on his own Web site.

The author, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, said he had no plans at present to post transcripts of his on-the-record interviews with another CIA official caught up in the imbroglio, John Maguire.

Maguire, who oversaw the agency's Iraq Operations Group in 2003, also denied complicity in the alleged forgery operation, via a statement issued through Richer.

"I never received any instruction from then Chief/NE Rob Richer or any other officer in my chain of command instructing me to fabricate such a letter," Maguire said. "Further, I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq."

Suskind says that Richer had pledged to him that he would not deny his quotes when the book came out.

"He said, 'I will stand tall.'"

Suskind says he "felt great sympathy" for both men, who he'd warned that "the heat will be white hot" when the book came out.

But Suskind said he would not release transcripts of his "hours and hours" of interviews with Maguire, "at least at this point,  because "he hasn't had a chance to read the book yet."

Maguire is said to be traveling in the Middle East and could not be reached for comment.   

"I'm prepared to post some transcripts (of interviews) with Richer," he said, "so people can judge for themselves."

"This is a battle between truth and power," Suskind said, "which is what the whole book is about." 

"I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habbush as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book," Richer said in an e-mail.

 "I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter," Maguire said in the same statement. 

Rob Richer, the CIA's Near East Division chief in 2003, and John Maguire, who oversaw the agency's Iraq Operations Group, are on the record confirming the existence of a fake, backdated letter purported to have been written by Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief linking Iraq to the 9/11 attacks and Niger uranium.

The allegations -- angrily dismisssed by the White House and  former CIA Director George Tenet -- are contained in The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, by Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Suskind also quotes Alan Foley, the head of WMD analysis for the CIA at the time, as saying, "It is, in my opinion, true that the administration, for whatever reason, was determined to have a showdown with Iraq that predated this whole WMD stuff."

The authors of an authoritative book on the Niger uranium affair, meanwhile, were skeptical of Suskind's charges.  

"I find it hard to believe that CIA would ceate such a forgery just to please the White House," said former Newsday reporter Knut Royce, another Pulitzer winner and co-author of The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War,  

"I don't find it hard to believe that the White House asked for it." 

His co-author, former Washington Post editor Peter Eisner, said, "What would be better is proof of the forged letter, allegedly produced by the CIA. How can Suskind show that this is true? We don't know."

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