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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Comments
Jeff - you seem suggest that the WMD letter in question was not forged: You place quotation marks around the word "forged" in your title, and appear to do so for every article you write on this topic. Then in your second graph, you say the White House angrily denied the "allegation" that a fake letter exists.
But that's not the allegation --the Niger letters were publicly exposed as fakes years ago. The mystery is who forged them and why; Suskind's allegation is that the CIA did under orders from the White House.
You then cite "How the Bush Admin used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War," and quote its authors as "skeptical of Suskind's charges" --charges you just misrepresented as the claim a forged letter merely exists.
Is this just hackneyed writing or are you being a weasel here?
Posted by: AnthonyG
| August 11, 2008 1:23 AM
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