Kucinich Sends Letter To Rumsfled Demanding Answers On His Role In Promoting Misinformation In The Lead Up To The War Against Iraq
Washington,
Dec 5, 2003 -
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), joined by Reps. Lee (D-CA), Sanders (I-VT), Maloney (D-NY), Carson (D-IN), Grijalva (D-AZ), and Clay (D-MO, today, sent the following letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to demand answers on his role in promoting misinformation in the lead-up to the war against Iraq:
December 5, 2003
The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
Department Of Defense
Office Of the Secretary
The Pentagon
Washington, D.C. 20301
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:
While it has now been widely reported that evidence President Bush used in the 2003 State of the Union, purporting to show that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear uranium from Niger, was known to be inaccurate even before the State of the Union was delivered, your own role in the dissemination of that disinformation has not been explained by you or the White House:
You emphasized the uranium claim in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee on September 19, 2002, seven months after it was determined to be false by Ambassador Wilson and General Fulford;
At your direction, a new intelligence office within the Department of Defense was created specifically to reassess evidence of Iraq’s WMD, and
At your direction, the Pentagon entered into a contractual relationship with The Rendon Group, a public relations firm which has also worked on behalf of the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi.
The “Sixteen words” of the Secretary of Defense:
On July 7, 2003, the White House finally admitted that the uranium claim should not have been inserted into the State of the Union because it was based on forged evidence. Since then, several individuals in the Administration have decided to take responsibility for not removing the “16 words”. However, while the State of the Union address was certainly one of the most important speeches, it was not the only speech that referenced the uranium claim. In fact, several members of the Bush Cabinet have made many statements citing the false claim over the past year. You were one of them.
On September 18, 2002, you testified under oath before the House Armed Services Committee, that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear capabilities:
He [Hussein] has, at this moment, stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and is pursuing nuclear weapons…. His regime has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons. Very likely all they need to complete a weapon is fissile material—and they are, at this moment, seeking that material—both from foreign sources and the capability to produce it indigenously. (Emphasis added)
Questions:
On what evidence did you base the uranium claim?
Did you review the testimony that you gave to the House Armed Services Committees on September 18, 2003 prior to delivering it? Have you reviewed your testimony since the uranium claim has been disputed and retracted?
Did you or anyone else raise objections to the citation on nuclear weapons in the testimony you delivered? If so, why was the information allowed to remain in your testimony?
Have you personally notified the Committee about the discrepancy in your testimony since it has been disputed?
Relative to Ambassador Wilson’s findings:
The uranium claim had in fact been disputed as early as March 2002, six and a half months prior to your address to Congress. In a New York Times op-ed on May 6, 2003 Nicholas Kristof wrote, “more than a year ago the vice president’s office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former US ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.” In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.
In response to the Administration’s denial that “no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery”, the envoy who was sent to Niger, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, came forward on July 6, 2003, and wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
Ambassador Wilson also wrote: “The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.” It is standard operating procedure that if the Vice President asks a question, he receives an answer. Furthermore, Cheney's chief-of-staff told Time Magazine that the Vice President had personal interest in the answer to the questions about Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger.
In addition to Ambassador Wilson’s report, The Washington Post reported that Deputy Commander in Chief, United States European Command, and Four-star General Carlton E. Fulford also traveled to Niger and similarly concluded that there was no evidence of collusion between Niger and Iraq on uranium. He stated: “I was convinced it was not an issue.” The Washington Post reported that General Fulford’s findings reached chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers.
This raises further questions:
When did the Vice President’s Office, the CIA or the State Department transmit to you, or the Department of Defense, the findings of Ambassador Wilson?
When did you personally become aware of the Wilson findings about the faulty uranium evidence? Who informed you of the discrepancy?
When did Chairman Myers transmit to you the findings of General Fulford?
Do you regard the above referenced findings of Ambassador Wilson as accurate or inaccurate? Do you regard the above referenced findings of General Fulford as accurate or inaccurate? Please explain.
With regard to the Office of Special Plans:
In late 2001, under your direction, a new intelligence office called Office of Special Plans (OSP) was created within the Department of Defense. According to Seymour Hersh in New Yorker magazine, the purpose of the OSP was to evaluate CIA and DIA intelligence, as well as Iraqi defector testimony, and to then manipulate the data to fit into a particular policy envisioned by yourself and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz:
“According to the Pentagon adviser, Special Plans was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States.”
Hersh continues, “These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi.”
On July 25, 2003, Jason Leopold, the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswire, wrote an article about the findings of the CIA analysts currently investigating the weapons controversy, “…the agents said the Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat.”
He further wrote, “More than a dozen CIA agents responsible for writing intelligence reports for the agency told the former CIA agents investigating the accuracy of the intelligence reports said they were pressured by the Pentagon and the Office of Special Plans to hype and exaggerate intelligence to show Iraq as being an imminent threat to the security of the U.S.”
Further Questions:
9. Did the Office of Special Plans re-evaluate and re-write CIA and DIA intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction?
10. Did you or anyone in the Office of Special Plans transmit to the CIA, the State Department, the White House or the National Security Advisor, any of the conclusions the Office of Special Plans drew? If so, when and to whom?
11. Did the Office of Special Plans ever assess the findings of Ambassador Wilson and/or General Fulford? If so, what was its assessment of the findings?
With Respect to The Rendon Group:
In February 2002, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was using the Rendon Group to assist its new propaganda agency, the Office of Strategic Information (OSI). While OSI was said publicly to have been dissolved after reports they would be disseminating “disinformation”, the Rendon contract with the Pentagon was not cancelled. When newspapers attempted to learn the nature of the contract work, Rendon spokeswoman Jeanne Sklarz rebuffed, "Let me just say that we have a confidentiality/nondisclosure agreement in place" with the Department of Defense.
During the first Gulf War, the CIA, to promote the Iraqi opposition seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein retained the Rendon Group. The Rendon Group created the name for the Iraqi National Congress and was paid over $100 million dollars by the CIA over the next five years to promote the INC and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi. A February 1998 report by Peter Jennings cited records obtained by ABC News showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars in the first year of its contract with the CIA and channeled $12 million of covert CIA funding to the INC between 1992 and 1996. The CIA IG investigated the Rendon Group in the mid-90’s for the abuse of taxpayer funds.
12. What has the Pentagon contracted the Rendon Group to do? How much are taxpayers paying for the Rendon Group’s work?
13. What did the Rendon Group produce for the Pentagon?
Conclusion:
Your testimony to Congress was influential in shaping the debate about going to war against Iraq and persuaded many Members to vote in favor of the use of military force.
Yet your testimony contained information that you should have known to be false at the time you asserted it. Under your direction, the Department of Defense contracted with a public relations firm that has worked for the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi and created a new intelligence office, the Office of Special Plans, whose purpose was to issue intelligence that supported a case for war against Iraq.
Finally, it is well known that you also have a long record of supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by military invasion. Long before becoming Secretary of Defense, on January 26, 1998, you signed a letter to then-President Bill Clinton urging him to take military action against Iraq to eliminate the threat Saddam Hussein posed the United States. You wrote:
The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
You were also reportedly eager to launch military action against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. On September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks upon this nation, according to Bob Woodward’s book ‘Bush at War’, you raised, “The possibility that the United States could take advantage of the opportunity offered by the terrorist attacks to go after Saddam immediately.”
Now that one of the pillars of the Administration’s case for an attack against Iraq has been disproved and disavowed, it is important to understand how unreliable intelligence became the basis for the war and who bears responsibility. Your answers, therefore, to these questions will help define your intention and role.
