Tenet’s Denials
Tenet has vehemently denied Suskind’s claims, going so far as to attack the author’s journalistic integrity.
“There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from CIA ever involved in any such effort," Tenet said in a statement issued earlier this month.
"It is well established that, at my direction, CIA resisted efforts on the part of some in the administration to paint a picture of Iraqi-Al Qa’ida connections that went beyond the evidence. The notion that I would suddenly reverse our stance and have created and planted false evidence that was contrary to our own beliefs is ridiculous."
Tenet and Suskind have clashed before. In an earlier book, The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind wrote that a high-level detainee named Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA characterized as a top al-Qaeda operative, was actually a low-level driver who was mentally unstable.
In Tenet’s book, At the Center of the Storm, he called Suskind’s allegations “baloney.”
In The Way of the World, Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not an immediate threat to the United States, despite spreading propaganda to the contrary to justify the invasion.
Suskind claims Habbush, Hussein’s director of the Iraqi intelligence service, had been turned by the U.S. government before the war and informed the White House “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”
However, the Bush administration chose to ignore the information from Habbush and other Iraqi government sources – which was buttressed by the failure of UN weapons inspectors to find WMD at suspected sites. Instead, Bush proceeded with the war in March 2003.
By summer and fall of 2003, as U.S. weapons inspectors on the ground were confirming the absence of WMD, the Bush administration began to worry about the possible consequences of having waged a war under false pretenses, according to Suskind’s book.
That was when the forged letter from Habbush to Hussein surfaced supposedly confirming some of the administration’s key pre-war assertions, linking Hussein to al-Qaeda and suggesting that Iraq recently had sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.
CIA’s Role
The central dispute over Suskind’s book revolves around whether he got the story right regarding the CIA’s role in generating the bogus document.
Richer, the CIA's former associate deputy director of operations, rebutted some of the charges attributed to him in the book and responded to an edited interview transcript that Suskind posted on his Web site on Aug. 8.
According to the transcript, Richer said he was part of a small group who was briefed on the preparation of the forged letter claiming a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The forged letter "probably passed through five or six people. George [Tenet] probably showed it to me, but then passed it probably to Jim Pavitt, [the CIA's deputy director of operations], who then passed it down to his chief of staff who passed it to me. 'Cause that's how – you know, so I saw the original. I got a copy of it," Richer told Suskind, according to the transcript.
Despite the transcript, Richer said he stood by “my absolute belief that the charges outlined in Mr. Suskind's book regarding Agency involvement in forging documents are not true."
Richer added: "During my time as a senior officer, I saw many documents from various offices of the White House regarding many topics. … I was asked to respond to documents regarding the potential use of Habbush upon his defection and during the difficult fall of 2003 when we were wrestling with a developing Iraqi insurgency and ways to combat it.
“I was also involved in many queries from elements of the administration trying to document an Al-Qa'ida and Saddam government link; proof of which was never found. Many of such queries did originate from the staff of the Office of the Vice President. None of this, however, substantiates Mr. Suskind’s explosive allegation. …
"It is important to note, however, in the transcript just released, I make no mention of having received an order to fabricate the letter as claimed by Mr. Suskind in his book. I do speak to discussions regarding using Habbush, which were frequent during that period, but what I was talking about was the possibility of using him to tamp down the insurgency – not to influence Western public opinion.”
Richer noted that in the edited transcripts, he had referred to the Habbush letter as “a non-event.” Richer added, “The fabrication of a letter as claimed by Mr. Suskind would have been much more than a ‘non-event.’ …
“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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