Conyers Questions Iraq 'Forgery'

“An order such as the one outlined by Mr. Suskind would have been a huge event – and in my opinion illegal. An order to fabricate such a document would have been rejected out of hand and it is improbable to believe anyone would write such a request.”

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In an Aug. 8 article in The American Conservative magazine, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said the bulk of Suskind’s claim – that a forged letter was produced linking Iraq to al-Qaeda – is correct but a “number of details are wrong,” including the CIA’s role.

Giraldi said “an extremely reliable and well placed source” told him that Richer and Maguire were not involved.

“The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source,” Giraldi wrote.

Giraldi added that “Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

“Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.”

Giraldi claimed the letter was prepared by former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who operated a top-secret shop inside the Pentagon known as the Office of Special Plans that exaggerated the Iraqi threat and provided the White House with bogus information about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

The shop, operating out of the Pentagon, was set up by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the goal of laying the groundwork for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq.

In his article, Giraldi said Vice President Cheney, “who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment.”

“The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen,” Giraldi wrote.

“It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.”

In early 2007, the Pentagon’s Inspector General issued a report on pre-war intelligence that concluded Feith’s Office of Special Plans "was inappropriately performing intelligence activities of developing, producing, and disseminating that should be performed by the intelligence community."

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