Senators may call Wolfowitz to testify on OSP role

[indictrichardperle]

George Tenet described in detail, in closed door senate hearings, the role of the OSP. Brent Scowcroft and retired CIA pushing for investigation of Wolfowitz, Feith and OSP.
Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz implicated.
(Powell comes out of this as the "hero")

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4157.htm

[goobergunch]

1. Open or closed session?

Because I really want to watch these hearings on C-SPAN...

[SoCalDem]

2. I can just hear the "hard hitting" questions now..

:eyes:

[indictrichardperle]

4. i am cynical as well...

the GOP will cover-up and many dems are "sympathetic" to Wolfowitz's middle east views.........however, Scowcroft and the CIA really are at odds with the neo-cons. I really do think Sneering Dick is the focus of people who want to see him resign. I think its telling that Powell is going to be made to look like the "hero", if Sneering Dick resigns, i think Powell is Roves choice for Veep.

[Nambe]

3. Don't watch without a neck brace. These are the kings of spin.

To these people, the truth is whatever you have to say to get what you want. They won't make mistakes in statements because they won't give direct answers to any question. Just letting them talk is a mistake IMO.

[study_war_no_more]

5. Powell the hero?

Didn't they build a statue of him in a village in Vietnam? Or was it in that unmarked mass grave in Panama?

[indepat]

9. Was it about 7,000 Panamanian

deaths?

[study_war_no_more]

6. Wolfowitz is undoubtedly the most

dangerous and craftiest of the group.

[leesa]

7. Is he a hero for telling the lies to the UN?

Or for his other atrocities.

[The Magistrate]

8. This Could Provide Some Rum Fun

The "Office of SDtrategic Plans" is nothing more than a propaganda bureau charged with fabricating and distorting facts in the interests of the criminals of the '00 Coup, to aid their deception of the people in matters of war and peace.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

10. OSP "The Office of Special Plans"...created because CIA wasn't

giving Bush the intel he wanted ...so OSP was created to fabricated intel for him last year...not Office of Strategic Plans...these are two different officies

google ..Pentagon Office of Special Plans...amazing shit!

[The Magistrate]

11. Thank You For The Correction, Ma'am

Acronyms are not my strong suit. This sounds like an even more virulent version of the same tendency.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

12. it seems they give these agencies like names to keep us confused

http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.06.06/news6.html

"They are running their own intelligence operation, including covert action, and are using contractors outside the government to do some of the leg work," said a former top CIA official. "Their area of work has been concentrated on Iraq, which is why the intelligence on WMD was so bad, but they have a much broader portfolio. The office is undergoing some scrutiny from inside the government given its poor track record and the lack of 'sanity checking' their products with the intelligence community. A lot of material they produce is not shared with CIA, not coordinated, and finds its way into public policy statements by the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney."

A senior Pentagon official strongly denied the allegations, however.

"The Office of Special Plans is a pure policy planning shop and it is not dealing with intelligence," the official told the Forward, stressing that the office was not pushing a hard line on Iran, nor was it conducting any covert operations.

In a news briefing on Wednesday, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy and a prominent neoconservative, rejected allegations that the Pentagon had in any way distorted intelligence information about Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans was first described by journalist Seymour Hersh in a recent New Yorker article. Hersh claimed that it had emerged as a rival to both the CIA and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency as a main source providing intelligence on Iraq to President Bush.

more...

[BrotherBuzz]

15. Tauscher's assessment of OSP

"The concern is they (OSP) were in the cherry-picking business -- cherry picking half-truths and rumors and only highlighting pieces of information that bolstered the administration's case for war," says U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

[Tinoire]

18. Ah... You didn't know?

I just answered you in a post below (before I read this one). The OSP
is bad, bad news Magistrate.

(Excerpt)

Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html

------------
It's much discussed in the folliwing thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=18394&mesg_id=18394&listing_type=search#18712

It's also discussed in a few other threads but you would have to do a search.

[Tinoire]

17. How do you think this is going to play out?

with the sister office being run right out of Sharon's office? This does not bode well for either the US or Israel.

This is a huge story. Everything is tying into OSP specifically propped up to support PNAC and AEI. This is why there's such anger in the professional intelligence communities that were marginalized in the interests of the OSP. I am sure that even the Mossad is furious about this! Bush and Sharon have really BUNGLED this one BIG-TIME! The Road map was a sham- Perle was calling Eitam telling him not to worry, not to implement a single aspect of the Road Map and all of this is coming out like closets so full of skeletons they can never be shut again. But who is opening these closets which are only some of the closets? Why is there no mention of the CFR, the Bilderbergers or of the Trilateral Commission?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=18394&mesg_id=18394&listing_type=search

Now I know why there was a HUGE splash about Truman's diaries with just a few select quotes
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=60724&mesg_id=60724&listing_type=search

[David Zephyr]

13. Most Important: Will He Be "Under Oath"?

If not, it won't matter and he will continue to lie.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. David Zephyr bush will claim "executive privilage" and wolfie will not go

[w4rma]

16. "a four-person Pentagon team...self-mockingly called the Cabal"

Bush 'skewed facts to justify attack on Iraq'

A growing number of US national security professionals are accusing the Bush Administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.

A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terror groups.

This team, self-mockingly called the cabal, "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defence Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.
...
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked closely with the Pentagon to build a case against Iraq. "There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a scandal," Mr Cannistraro said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/31/1054177765483.html