Friday, January 13, 2006
Larisa Alexandrovna in Raw Story reports that the Office of Special Plans had agents on the ground in Iraq in the months after the invasion and contemplated planting weapons of mass destruction:
Who knows on this one? I'd like to see someone other than Raw Story touch this story -- someone that I trust a little more. Like many people I first became aware of Raw Story because of its coverage of the Plame scandal -- they seemed to be getting scoops that no one else was getting. Their Plame work was very good, but let's not forget that a lot of those scoops turned out to be false, or at least unverifiable.
For what it's worth, Al Jazeera has picked up this story...
[T]he Office of Special Plans’ teams were deployed in obscurity and on occasion even bumped into sanctioned special ops teams, creating a sense of unease among the various forces on the ground.
Sources raised most concern about an alleged off-book 4-5 man team which operated in the summer through the fall of 2003. What this team was doing and under whose authority it operated is unclear.
Yet at least one source close to the UN Security Council tells RAW STORY that the smaller team was acting on behalf of Office of Special Plans and Defense Department leadership, specifically under the guidance of Feith and in tandem with Cambone. [ ... ]
This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.
During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members who were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.
“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”
The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.
“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,” the source added.
Who knows on this one? I'd like to see someone other than Raw Story touch this story -- someone that I trust a little more. Like many people I first became aware of Raw Story because of its coverage of the Plame scandal -- they seemed to be getting scoops that no one else was getting. Their Plame work was very good, but let's not forget that a lot of those scoops turned out to be false, or at least unverifiable.
For what it's worth, Al Jazeera has picked up this story...
